Steps to an easy online #1000tracks

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Yesterday morning i had some time to think about how to implement our #1000tracks in an easy way online.

My first idea was to do the administration of files online with WordPress on board tools. Realizing that its not possible to add tags to media files in a standard WordPress install i found a plugin, that allows to do that.

So the WordPress media library could be our file repository.

Currently there is an upload limit to our media library concerning the size of a single file. There is a way to bypass this (basically: upload via ftp, then pull in the files to the WordPress media lib) – but it is possible to lift the upload limit (i just have to check if it works via .htaccess, a php-ini file or maybe via the WordPress functions).

Then i had the idea, that the basic Schnitzler concept (using a cassette-player for each track) could be implemented easily in the browser: just add the audiofiles to an HTML5 audio player, one player for each file, and start playing, by pressing the play and pause buttons and increase or lower the volume. Because there is a limitation to one file that can be played at once on a site, the audiofiles have to be implemented each to an iframe. Depending on the browser you are using the player offers some nice add ons: e.g. the player, that comes with firefox is able to loop files and to switch the tempo: 0.5x, 1x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 2x

One more problem if we are using the audioplayer that is integrated to the browser: after loading the site all players start to play immediatley.

I think there should exist a javascript based audioplayer, that offers more possibilities across platforms: e.g. to stop the player onLoad, to loop automatically, to switch tempo and maybe more … If we decide to go this way i’ll do some research. This could be a good one: https://howlerjs.com/.

The process of creating the single player pages – which then are put together in a site with iframes – sureley can be setup so that this can be done in an easy and comfortable way.

Vision for the future: soundsets (a subset of the 1000 tracks) can be generated and stored to a website; to do a concert all you need is a device, that is able to open websites (e.g. a smartphone) and a (fast) internet connection; #1000tracks concerts can be done all around the world; everybody can be the musician …

Here http://www.elektrodomestika.net/1000-tracks/ i prepared a very basic example. Maybe you want to lower the volume when checking the example, because all audioplayers start playing together 😉

#1000tracks #1000pistas #1000spuren

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I have started to tag the tracks I am uploading to Soundcloud with the hashtags #1000tracks #1000pistas #1000spuren. I think it could be interesting to play with these hashtags as we upload and share some of the tracks we are producing for the project. I just added them to the Operator-2-23 track I uploaded a couple of minutes ago, and also added them to the previous tracks I have shared in the Soundcloud channel.

In this jam I played around with my mobile set-up of granular synthesizers played in a two i-pads, the sound of the Roland rs-5 sytnh, and two new music toys I have added to my setup. One toy is the Pocket Operator PO-12, a tiny drum machine and synth made by Teenage Engineering.
The other music toy that I used in this jam is the Gakken SX-150 Mark II, a analog synth. Powered by 2=4 AA batteries, this synth creates loud sounds, has an oscillator with an LFO for modulation, it can receive a external mono signal via a line in input, and also comes with a stylus that can be used for playing a pad.

Thinking about the metadata we can add to the tracks, I would like to share some ideas for the kind of categories we can have. Below is an initial sketch of the taxonomy we can create for describing the tracks and organizing the metadata of all the project. I imagine, at the end it would be like an archive of tracks we can explore and remix in different ways.

  • Infrastructure sounds
  • Machine sounds: mechanical, electrical
  • Outdoors: wind, lakes, woods, ocean,..
  • Machines
  • Live recordings
  • Location
  • Duration
  • Human voices
  • Animal sounds
  • Found sounds
  • Synthesis
  • Beats

home studio up and (nearly) running

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thanks to Pablos help (who spent the whole day with me, working in my room) i’ve been able to start the setup of my homestudio. removing mountains of “elektroschrott” (electrical scrap) mixed with dust and ashes that i’ve been collecting on my second big desk, literally for years … now the machines are in place, nearly ready to run:

there’s missing the cabling and i realized, that my mixer didn’t like the years without mixing (and the dust, of course) … but a start is made, and my motivation is still high 🙂

i had to check out my new sound toy: a lumanoise v.02 (a light controlled synth):

aside from that i did a little research concerning playing music together live and online – which could be a nice highlight as you suggested to keep the motivation high for the 1000 tracks … i found some starting points to free software that could be explored further:

ohmstudio — source nexus — jamulus — jammr

8_1000_170417

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I got one idea for a way of collaboration – inspired by the work of Conrad Schnitzler. I had the idea to take one of his basic principles on which he has been working his whole life: in his early works in the seventies he started to work with several simple cassette players. Each one served like a track in a mixer. It was possible to influence two basic parameters: play/stop and volume. In his walking performances alone (as 3-track mixer) or together with another musician (another 3-track mixer) or with several musicians (each one playing one track), as you see in the stills from the videos:

He was working in producing 1000 different cassettes (= tracks) to be played in this way in a concert (but didn’t finish the 1000).

So my idea is to work (with digital means) in a similar way: produce 1000 tracks that can be played together. I did some work in Ableton and prepared 8 tracks, mixing them (with some more parameters than just play/stop and volume) and recording this mix:

It would be very easy to create a setup for a lot of tracks (basically this can be done in each sound editor who is able to handle multi tracks).

Next Stop: Conrad Schnitzler

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Inspired by a three hour emission by Deutschlandfunk i started to research about Conrad Schnitzler. Paraphrasing the intro text:

A Long Night About Conrad Schnitzler
Sometimes even music comes out

By Beate and Stefan Becker

Chirping, bubbling, flickering: it sounds like factory sirens, sometimes like a chattering train. Intermedia artist Conrad Schnitzler mixes all these sounds into new music. As a craftsman without musical education, he becomes an important “sound worker” – and is regarded as one of the pioneers of the electronic music scene of the 1970s.

Conrad Schnitzler (1937 – 2011) was inspired by the new music from Cage to Stockhausen. In 1968 he opened the first underground club in Berlin with Zodiak as a space for happenings, theater and music performances.

Here two short portraits:

Here you find a huge listing of videos and sounds available in the web: http://fancymoon.com/con_s/video.shtml

Jamming Again

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A post shared by @vVvA (@vvva_) on

Improvising with multiple devices is always useful for creating dynamic and complex atmospheres. After many months without playing with music devices this year I have started to jam again, playing with a mix of digital and analogue devices. Making music is an essential part of my creative life and I was distancing from it due to the other projects I have to handle at work and other pressures from professional life.

Fortunately I have been able to reconnect with the music practice. I created a mobile set-up at my home studio that I can arrange and disassemble pretty easy in a couple of minutes. I have been also recording the different sessions, and with less regularity, listening to them and finding excerpts and interesting pieces. I am uploading them to Soundcloud so they are easy to reproduce and stream online but I could also upload them to a server so they can be downloaded. It would be interesting to reactivate the sound of elektrodomestika and experiment with some collaborations across the Atlantic. I wonder what would be the best way to do that kind of creative exchange between music recorded in Boston and Berlin.

Below is a piece tentatively called Janus. It has already many layers of sound but perhaps can also be remixed again.