The first set consisted of duo improvisations by Holland Hopson, fretless banjo and  electronics with Mike Majkowski, double bass.

Holland Hopson & Mike Majkowski; Photo: Terumi Narushima

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 1.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 2.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 3.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 4.mp3

Next was a wonderful set by Kraig Grady, just tuned vibraphone and Terumi Narushima, just tuned pump organ.

Grady Narushima.mp3

Holland Hopson & Mike Majkowski; photo: Terumi Narushima

Photo by Nicholas Zambetti

I recently ordered an Arduino board to try another approach for getting sensor data into my computer. More and more of my students are using them, too, and I wanted some first-hand experience. Most of my previous work has been with the Basic Stamp family of boards. The Arduino arrived this week and I promptly sat down and gave it a try.

The first thing I noticed (aside from the price: the entire Arduino setup costs significantly less than similar boards!) was how much easier it was to get the Arduino going than the Stamp. This isn’t exactly a fair comparison, since my initial experience with Stamps was way back in 1999 or 2000, and it was also my first time fooling with microcontrollers. I’ve learned plenty since then, and the products (along with their attendant software) have come a long way. I have to give the nod to the Arduino for its cross-platform, open-source software. (When I first started with the Stamp I kept a junker 386 PC around, just to run the Stamp compiler. No fun.)

I’m also impressed by the Arduino software. I’ve admittedly done little more than fire up the example “sketches” and tweak a few lines of code. However, the Processing/Java-style language seems a better fit for my (weak) coding style. The community around the Arduino seems very active. There are already a number of projects that simplify moving data from the board to common software such as MaxMSP and Processing.

Then there’s also the luxury of the USB cable that serves for both communication and power supply. This may seem trivial, but I look forward to the day when I don’t need to change the battery in my sensor box before every performance, or carry a spare 9-volt wherever I go. I may also jettison my USB MIDI interface along with a MIDI cable required by my Stamp setup. Suddenly, though, my USB ports are getting a little crowded…

The one niggling worry I have is the serial communication with Max. Using MIDI is certainly slower, but seems foolproof to me: no handshaking necessary, a dead simple initialization process, etc. I hope my fears are simply due to a lack of experience; that once everything is setup and tested I’ll feel just as confident with the serial connection as I do with my aging MIDI cables.

Saturday April 10th
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

8PM
Suggested Donation $5 (all proceeds go to touring performers)

This concert features Finnish- based composer/sound artist Marko Timlin alongside thenumber46, the collaborative effort of electro-acoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe and electronic musician Philip White. Both Timlin and thenumber46 employ improvisation and non-linear analog systems to create music in which a delicate balance exists between the human and machine. A music at once intuitive and mechanical. Explosive and subdued. Violent and meditative.

More about the artists after the jump.

Marko Timlin is a Helsinki-based sound artist, composer, musician and inventor of virtual and analogue instruments. He has developed an intuitive interaction with electronic media, creating his own unconventional sound adventures in an improvisational context challenging to both the ear and the mind. Maintaining a delicate balance between order and chaos, his music happens in real-time, often surprising the artist as well as audience. His performances are effectively a dialog between man and machine.

Timlin founded the Berlin-based group tritop with Antye and Jotka of Laub, with whom he released 2 CDs and a Vinyl-maxi on INFRACOM records. His collaborations include Merja Nieminen, Kristina Frei (Zeit_Raum), Klaus Janek, Pink Twins and Petri Kuljuntausta (Helsinki Invasion), NewImproMasters, Laub, Tarwater, Rope, Foo Fanick and the 17 Hippies. He has toured extensively throughout Europe with his “Sensor-Sound-Machine” instrument.

thenumber46 push and coax feedback systems, physically and psychologically, into ultimate audible terrains, extracting sonic extremes from their instruments and themselves. Consisting of Suzanne Thorpe on flute and electronics and Philip White on electronic feedback, the duo improvise on the precipice of unpredictable sounds, exploiting the volatile and explosive in their music. They have toured throughout the U.S., performing at galleries and venues including the Fractal Mind Gaze Hut, Oakland, CA; OK Mountain, Austin, TX; Redux Contemporary Art Studios, Charleston, SC; Monkeytown, Brooklyn, NY; The Stone, NYC; and the Pyramid Atlantic, MD. Their recording, “bleach and ammonia”, was recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, CA, and recently released in limited-edition cassette format on Tape Drift Records.

Suzanne Thorpe is a composer, improviser, educator and curator. She has performed with Chris Brown, David Dove, Annette Krebs, Maggie Nicols, BhobRainey, Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Zeena Parkins, Ulrich Krieger and more at places such as Issue Project Room (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Diapason (NYC), the Activating the Medium Festival (SF), the No Idea Festival (Austin), etc. In another life, she is a founding member of Mercury Rev, with whom she worked from 1989 – 2001, a member of The Wounded Knees and can be heard from time-to-time mucking it up with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., all three of whom she played with at 2009′s All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Nightmare Before Christmas in England.

Philip White’s performances center on a non-linear feedback system, which consists of a mixer and several homemade circuits. In addition to his work with analog and digital electronics, White has written extensively for chamber ensembles and created a large body of inter-media pieces that explore meaning in information transmission. His works have been exhibited in galleries across the US and Germany. In addition his solo performances he currently works with Suzanne Thorpe (thenumber46), Chuck Johnson (with chuck johnson with philip white) and Ryan Talman. Recent and upcoming performances/exhibitions include Bent Festival 2010, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Diapason (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Sonic Circuits (DC), Redux New Media Festival (Charleston, SC) and Galerie Neurotitan (Berlin). Philip was recently awarded a Meet the Composer Creative Connections grant.

I’m excited about this show on Tuesday, April 6 at Bread and Jam in Cohoes, NY featuring Human Mirror and The Jazz Robot. I’ll be opening the show with banjo and electronics. Come early; The music starts at 7pm.

• High temp: 5 F
• Low temp: -2 F
• Average Wind Speed: 46.7 mph gusting to 72 mph

A foggy day with visibility down to 1/16th of a mile. The observatory reported zero hours of sunshine for the day. Perfect conditions for rime ice. We could hardly step outside without it accumulating on our clothes and, of course, our gear.

My recording bag covered in rime ice. My headphones were unscathed since I wore them under my balaclava (and hat (and parka hood)).

I brought out my contact mics to record the sound of rime accumulating on them. The best spot I found was attaching them to the windward side of a wooden sign post. Here’s an excerpt:

rime_accumulation.mp3

Listening to the entire recording one can clearly hear the frequency of the resonant ping sounds increase as more ice accumulates. I suspect the ice accumulation reduces the surface area of the contact mic or otherwise stiffens the transducer–in a manner similar to a drummer increasing the pressure on a drum head and thus causing the pitch to rise.

Here’s a recording of an ice-covered chain squeaking in the wind. The squeak is less metallic than I expected, sounding more like rubbing ice cubes together.

squeaky_chain.mp3

Here’s a photo of the chain (taken on another, much sunnier day). Yes, this chain appears to be preventing the building from blowing off the mountain. The story I heard is that the chains were an important part of the original building. When they rebuilt the structure, chains were included as an historical and decorative element. There were times when I could have used a chain or two to prevent me from blowing away.

Jackie and I covered in rime ice after our contact mic recording expedition.

Here's all of my audio gear packed up and ready to go.

January 9: We all gathered at Jackie’s house, threw our gear in the van and drove to New Hampshire. Jacqueline Goss was the leader of the crew: video artist, writer, director, producer. Jesse Cain: cinematographer. Dani Leventhal: talent. (She hates that word, but after spending the better part of a week together I think it fits just fine.) We spent the first night enjoying the comforts of the Appalachian Mountain Club Joe Dodge Lodge. Jesse unpacked and assembled the camera so we could begin shooting first thing in the morning.

Jessie and Dani checking out the focal length on the 135mm lens

January 10: First thing in the morning we met our ride up the mountain (snow tractor!) at the Auto Road and took a minute to shoot a few establishing shots.

Mt. Washington (the summit is obscured here--it's just behind the peak on the right)

On the way to the summit we stopped just above the treeline to shoot a few more scenes. I loved seeing the stunted krumholtz trees that are just visible in the lower left corner of this photo.

Jackie and Jesse on the Auto Road

Late morning, we arrived at the summit and quickly unloaded our equipment. Visibility was good, and since we didn’t know whether we’d get clear skies again Jackie and Jesse and Dani peeled off to shoot some scenes that didn’t require sync sound while I took a look around the observatory and organized our gear.

Summit Weather:

• High temp: 1 F
• Low temp: -5 F
• Average Wind Speed: 45 mph gusting to 62 mph

Here’s an excerpt from the first day of recording; a scene where Dani knocks the rime ice off a sign. These sounds are indicative of winter weather on the mountain: wind envelopes everything, so even rather violent actions produce only faint tinkles of ice.

knocking_rime_off_sign.mp3

Here are some photos I took during construction.

This is the bottom of the speaker. I simply scribed the circumference of the bowl on a piece of 1/2″ plywood and cut out the circle using a jigsaw.

Salad bowl with speaker holes marked and taped

Here’s the bowl with the position of each speaker marked and taped. If you look closely you can see a small red mark at the center of each circle. I used a string attached to the center of the bowl to mark the center of all the equatorial speakers. The tape is simply to prevent the bottom of my jigsaw from scarring the surface of the bowl.

Salad bowl with holes drilled for jigsaw blade

Next I drilled holes in each speaker cutout large enough to fit the blade of my jigsaw.

Salad bowl with speaker holes

Here’s the bowl with all the speaker holes cut. It’s easy to crack the salad bowl after removing so much of the material, so take care with all subsequent drilling and cutting.

Detail of cut used to enlarge back of speaker opening

One result of working with the elliptical geometry of a hemisphere is that the back side of the holes we cut is slightly smaller than the front side. This might prevent your speakers from sitting flush against the surface. I only needed to trim a few places from the back of each circle to get the Infinity speakers to mount flush, but I had to cut the entire back edge of each opening in order to mount the Polk speakers.

Finished hemi showing knobs and connections

Here’s the finished speaker. (I know, I skipped plenty of intervening steps! I was having too much fun putting all the pieces together to stop and take pictures.) The volume knobs (one for each stereo amp) are on the left. In the middle is the power connector. On the right is a 6-conductor Neutrik connector for all the audio signals.

Finished hemi on top of subwoofer

A front view of the finished speaker. It’s sitting on top of a Sony subwoofer I picked up at a yard sale. The two together have a nice R2-unit look. I’ve set the crossover fairly high (around 300Hz). I expect I’ll back it down after some more listening tests.

I’ve already performed once with this hemi. So far, the biggest problem I’ve encountered is having the amps cut out on me when the input levels get too high. The Dayton amps seem to have a protection circuit that shuts them down when they’re driven too hard. It’s better than having the amps blow up, to be sure, but a bit of a drag having the audio suddenly drop out. Sending the low frequency signals to the sub seems to ease the load placed on the hemi amps. I’ve also been experimenting with limiters and high-ratio compressors, but I haven’t yet found the silver bullet. I’ve only scratched the surface of spatialization possibilities with this setup, and I’m looking forward to working with it even more.

Late Afternoon Cogs Heads Down, Photo by Jeff Glover

I’m headed to the top of Mt. Washington in about a month. I’ll be recording audio for an experimental documentary project led by Jacqueline Goss. At Jackie’s request I’ve been reading material on the history and operation of the Mt. Washington Observatory. I’m already having fun geeking out about cloud cover and wind speed and fog and rime.

Jacqueline Goss, from The 100th Undone

Still trying to figure out how to actually record usable sound in 50mph wind… I’m currently building a handful of DIY contact mics/hydrophones in anticipation of recording ice accumulation and the straining of various summit structures in full-on gales. I’m also building a few electret omni mics so I can have something to take outside with impunity in the worst conditions. I’ll try to post some photos of my homebrew audio projects. Also look for future reports and audio samples from the mountain top.

After a few consultations with the excellent tech team at iEAR, I had the tweeter removed, verified that it was indeed the problem, and gathered enough information to purchase replacements. I then headed over to Madisound to choose replacement tweeters. Support at Madisound was exemplary–a quick phone call yielded a handful of recommendations for replacement tweeters.

I opted for the SEAS Prestige 27TDF (H1211) tweeter. I’m no audiophile speaker-building veteran, nor could I reasonably measure the frequency response of the factory tweeters. So my choice was determined by finding the closest physical match of diaphragm size, outside diameter, etc. Oh, and budget was a concern, too. I could have spent more on tweeters than I paid for the monitors themselves. $33 each seemed about right. I bought two, realizing that the likelihood of a perfect match was slim–the goal was to replace both tweeters with acceptable sounding units.

Old. vs. New. The factory tweeter is on the left. The SEAS replacement is on the right.

Installing the tweeters was mostly straightforward. I used my trusty dremel to carve out a little space in the opening for the new tweeters’ connectors. The only mystery was the polarity of the wires going to the tweeters. I connected the tweeter both ways and listened for differences. The correct wiring was readily apparent: upper mid frequencies all but disappeared when the polarity was reversed.

So, how do the new tweeters compare to the factory tweeters? On the whole, favorably. They’re noticeably quieter; I had to increase the tweeter gain by about 7 dB to get the new tweeter to match the factory unit. Their performance is less consistent at lower volume levels, with the lower range of the tweeter much less prominent when listening at lower volumes. But when I turn up the volume the response flattens out considerably and the difference between the tweeters becomes almost imperceptible. One reason I liked the Fostex monitors to begin with was their balanced sound at low listening levels. I’m disappointed to lose some of that clarity, but pleased that the speakers’ overall character is not radically changed when listening at more typical levels.

Here are the speakers on my workbench with a new tweeter installed on the left and the old one on the right.

Close up shot showing the new tweeter on the left and the old one on the right.

I’ve been listening and mixing with the retweeted speakers for about 10 days now and I feel like my old monitors are back in the studio.