An outtake from the upcoming 3-disc "Ambiente" album by Fluorescent Grey, out on Record Label Records sometime in early November. We've got some more previews of this release coming soon, so keep abreast. This one is quite lovely, filled with spacey arpeggios and long, expansive cosmic textures. Check out the RLR site for preorder info, as well as the details on the super limited edition release that comes with a sweet original painting by Abby Martin.
Showing posts with label fluorescent grey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fluorescent grey. Show all posts
All the California readers out there take note! Bay Area-based Record Label Records is hosting their first 2 day festival on September 23rd & 24th at Zool in Oakland and it's a massive line-up chock full of Gravity Halo regulars. "Cremation of Care" is the first ever multi-day festival from RLR and here's hoping they continue it annually if they're able to put together acts like this. Tickets are $9 per night or $15 for a 2-day pass and both nights offer plenty to drool over.
Hyperprism stand-alone for OS9
Named after the Edgard Varese composition of the same name and coming before the Korg Kaoss Pad, before 'bit crushing' was a term used in music production, we had the Hyperprism stand-alone for OS9. A set of over 25 x/y grid controllable effects that ranged from bread and butter compressors and EQs to Eventide-inspired DSP manglers. Notable effects included the Sonic Decimator, Frequency Shifter, Bass Maximizer and Harmonic Exciter. Even with the high quality mastering plugins like Waves, there hasn't been anything close to what the Bass Maximizer was capable of. You are able to take a bird chirping recording and add deep realistic bass & subharmonic bass tones to it.
The x/y grid could be controlled with a mouse, which at the time was a huge leap forward in and of itself. You could actually then record and then playback x/y grid automation, at least 2 full minutes worth. Kush Arora's early noise project Involution would lug out multiple G3 powermacs running Hyperprism at his shows. I remember checking out the computer screens on their setups right before they were about to go on and they always had these crazy spectrograph looking premade automation patterns ready to go. Unfortunately, the only version of Hyperprism that’s easy to find these days is a Dxi plugin for Windows. The Windows plugin version of Hyperism, even up to its last rumored iteration, always stayed somewhat behind its Mac counterpart.
Status: virtually unfindable for mac, directx plugin version 2.5 easily obtainable for windows
Edgard Varèse - Hyperprism (1923)
Named after the Edgard Varese composition of the same name and coming before the Korg Kaoss Pad, before 'bit crushing' was a term used in music production, we had the Hyperprism stand-alone for OS9. A set of over 25 x/y grid controllable effects that ranged from bread and butter compressors and EQs to Eventide-inspired DSP manglers. Notable effects included the Sonic Decimator, Frequency Shifter, Bass Maximizer and Harmonic Exciter. Even with the high quality mastering plugins like Waves, there hasn't been anything close to what the Bass Maximizer was capable of. You are able to take a bird chirping recording and add deep realistic bass & subharmonic bass tones to it. 
The x/y grid could be controlled with a mouse, which at the time was a huge leap forward in and of itself. You could actually then record and then playback x/y grid automation, at least 2 full minutes worth. Kush Arora's early noise project Involution would lug out multiple G3 powermacs running Hyperprism at his shows. I remember checking out the computer screens on their setups right before they were about to go on and they always had these crazy spectrograph looking premade automation patterns ready to go. Unfortunately, the only version of Hyperprism that’s easy to find these days is a Dxi plugin for Windows. The Windows plugin version of Hyperism, even up to its last rumored iteration, always stayed somewhat behind its Mac counterpart.The x/y recording feature was never an option, nor was running Hyperprism standalone on Windows. It's buggy on anything past Windows xp, and most host sequencers don't accommodate DirectX plugins anymore.
There are a couple of stores on the net that seem to have sealed copies of the OS9 version of Hyperprism for sale, and one of them charges $259 for it. The only problem is. even if you absolutely had to have a used OS9 copy, you'd still have to have access to a SCSI floppy mac G3 to run the copy protection scheme, and who knows if 15 years later you'd even get it to work without some kind of challenge/response from the long out of existence Aboretum company. And to top it off, there is little chance, unless you are a UNIX configurist, of getting some sort of virtual floppy drive
When hyperprism was first on the scene there weren't any high quality native digital reverbs for the computer platform. 'Hyperverb' in the hyperprism suite was worth the price of admission alone, offering rich realistic room tones with drone capable reverb tails.
There are a couple of stores on the net that seem to have sealed copies of the OS9 version of Hyperprism for sale, and one of them charges $259 for it. The only problem is. even if you absolutely had to have a used OS9 copy, you'd still have to have access to a SCSI floppy mac G3 to run the copy protection scheme, and who knows if 15 years later you'd even get it to work without some kind of challenge/response from the long out of existence Aboretum company. And to top it off, there is little chance, unless you are a UNIX configurist, of getting some sort of virtual floppy drive workaround in an emulated OS9 legacy
mode running on a newer mac with OSX.
Status: virtually unfindable for mac, directx plugin version 2.5 easily obtainable for windows
Edgard Varèse - Hyperprism (1923)
Anarchy FX
This is the newest software I'll be talking about in this series. Coming out around 2000 Leighton Hargreaves designed this plugin pack for Windows that had many unique ideas packed inside of it. To say this is an understatement, together they make up probably the most unique plugin pack ever created.
The Corkscrew filter was a multiband pitchshifter that utilizes the Shepard tone (or Risset tone) technique to create an infinitely rising/falling audio illusion effect. The harmonic adder put 
glowing, crystalline upper order harmonics to the sound, but not in an apex aural exciter sort of way. It would add rich synthesizer textures to whatever sound you were running through it, spectrally built off of that source material. The spectral Convolve was an interesting spin on the bit crushing effect: tnstead of using bit depths and sampling rates, it would spectrally detect the 'noise' and the 'tones' in the sound and let you fade between both extremes. Where both extremes sounded like totally different flavors of very degraded low quality mp3s. I 
never could get 'length separator' to do anything too compelling, but the concept description here sounds pretty fascinating if one could get it set right:
"Bisects the input signal according to the lengths of its component frequencies. Short sounds become the 'transient' part, long sounds become the 'stable' part. These parts can be isolated (ie the other part removed), or assigned different pan positions to create stereo movement."
Bonus: from my email correspondence with Leighton Hargreaves:
Reflecting on sound: “As I've become older and wiser, I've had to re-evaluate the idea that "there must be sounds that could exist, which no one has ever heard, waiting for someone to invent a way to make them" - now I think this is a tad naive. Reductively speaking, the vast majority of possible sounds will never be heard by anyone. If you pick 12 notes at random from an 88-key piano, the number of possible combinations is greater than the number of stars in the universe (and amazingly, after a vst plugin has output five frames of audio - just over a tenth of a millisecond - there have been the potential for more unique output possibilities than the number of stars in the universe).....
......But most of these combinations wouldn't be musically meaningful, which is why it's hard to write an original melody. So the objective must be to invent a good sound, not just a new sound! This takes us deep into the subjective realm of human cognition - it's a mistake to even think of 'sound' we perceive (as opposed to the measurable physical vibrations) as a distinct input channel, or as separate from our other senses or our internal mental state, as beautifully shown with in McGurk effect. “
regarding his plugin work: “a few months ago my AnarchySoundSoftware web server crashed, I lost my online shop setup, and all my old plugins disappeared off the web. Until yesterday that is. Inspired by your email, and a few other recent emails from AnarchySoundSoftware users, I've quickly thrown up a new site, over which I'm publishing everything.” All of his plugins are now free of charge on his website including many new curious goodies like 'Geosynth'
I hope that this was an interesting look back at a plugin that has been all but lost to the shifting sands of new technology, and I hope that you check out Mr. Hargreaves’ site.
Next time: Hyperprism Stand-alone
This is the newest software I'll be talking about in this series. Coming out around 2000 Leighton Hargreaves designed this plugin pack for Windows that had many unique ideas packed inside of it. To say this is an understatement, together they make up probably the most unique plugin pack ever created.The Corkscrew filter was a multiband pitchshifter that utilizes the Shepard tone (or Risset tone) technique to create an infinitely rising/falling audio illusion effect. The harmonic adder put glowing, crystalline upper order harmonics to the sound, but not in an apex aural exciter sort of way. It would add rich synthesizer textures to whatever sound you were running through it, spectrally built off of that source material. The spectral Convolve was an interesting spin on the bit crushing effect: tnstead of using bit depths and sampling rates, it would spectrally detect the 'noise' and the 'tones' in the sound and let you fade between both extremes. Where both extremes sounded like totally different flavors of very degraded low quality mp3s. I never could get 'length separator' to do anything too compelling, but the concept description here sounds pretty fascinating if one could get it set right:"Bisects the input signal according to the lengths of its component frequencies. Short sounds become the 'transient' part, long sounds become the 'stable' part. These parts can be isolated (ie the other part removed), or assigned different pan positions to create stereo movement."
Bonus: from my email correspondence with Leighton Hargreaves:
Reflecting on sound: “As I've become older and wiser, I've had to re-evaluate the idea that "there must be sounds that could exist, which no one has ever heard, waiting for someone to invent a way to make them" - now I think this is a tad naive. Reductively speaking, the vast majority of possible sounds will never be heard by anyone. If you pick 12 notes at random from an 88-key piano, the number of possible combinations is greater than the number of stars in the universe (and amazingly, after a vst plugin has output five frames of audio - just over a tenth of a millisecond - there have been the potential for more unique output possibilities than the number of stars in the universe).....
......But most of these combinations wouldn't be musically meaningful, which is why it's hard to write an original melody. So the objective must be to invent a good sound, not just a new sound! This takes us deep into the subjective realm of human cognition - it's a mistake to even think of 'sound' we perceive (as opposed to the measurable physical vibrations) as a distinct input channel, or as separate from our other senses or our internal mental state, as beautifully shown with in McGurk effect. “
regarding his plugin work: “a few months ago my AnarchySoundSoftware web server crashed, I lost my online shop setup, and all my old plugins disappeared off the web. Until yesterday that is. Inspired by your email, and a few other recent emails from AnarchySoundSoftware users, I've quickly thrown up a new site, over which I'm publishing everything.” All of his plugins are now free of charge on his website including many new curious goodies like 'Geosynth'
I hope that this was an interesting look back at a plugin that has been all but lost to the shifting sands of new technology, and I hope that you check out Mr. Hargreaves’ site.
Next time: Hyperprism Stand-alone
Media Roots Music - Fluorescent Grey Mix #1 by Media Roots
The Rotation(s) blog artist in residence this month, Fluorescent Grey, put together this killer mix of vintage electronic tunes from the 70s-80s for Media Roots Music. There are some absolutely amazing tracks in this mix, some of which would still sound fresh if released today. If you're a fan of electronic music in general, I suggest you peep this mix and enjoy some of the classics of yesteryear.
The Rotation(s) blog artist in residence this month, Fluorescent Grey, put together this killer mix of vintage electronic tunes from the 70s-80s for Media Roots Music. There are some absolutely amazing tracks in this mix, some of which would still sound fresh if released today. If you're a fan of electronic music in general, I suggest you peep this mix and enjoy some of the classics of yesteryear.
Cooledit Pro 2.0 (now Adobe Audition 3.0)
In the mid-1990s, two former Microsoft employees started a company called Syntrillium Software that became known for two products -- a psychedelic screen saver called Snoqualmie, and Cooledit.
Ignored during its heyday, Cooledit’s spotlight was stolen by other programs at the time like Soundforge, Protools, even Peak.
In August 2003, software company Adobe purchased Cooledit Pro for 16.5 million dollars. They changed the name to 'Adobe Audition' but kept things mostly identical until May 2004.
Whereas the early versions were a skinned Cooledit with newer features, the newer versions (i.e., Windows/Mac iteration 4) are stunted by the drastic new limitations. Additionally, Audition replaces a lot of the original algorithms with Izotope's. The original Cooledit Pro was miraculous. The power of the effects suite alone rivals most contemporary plugins. Cooledit Pro lets you type in numerical values going to the 5th decimal place, and in some circumstances (Phaser rate comes to mind), you can get away with typing in negative values for really interesting results. Unlike most plugins of today, you can actually nearly freeze cool edit for typing in a rate or voice amount too fast (try this in the Chorus feature).
I had a very depressing hard drive headcrash experience back in 1997 and lost a lot of my best Cooledit work. I swear, I have been trying ever since to recreate some of the magic in those original sessions. Some of it managed to escape the erasure here, which i later used in the track 'Telelogical Attractor' on Gaseous Opal Orbs
secret hint: Try playing with the Time Stretch algorithm's stretch ‘rate’ typing in values like 222 or 999 for very strange results. The pitch shift mode also reacts strangely with the same values
One of these days, I'd like to try what Markus Popp
set out to do in 'O' and start by
isolating myself back down to using only Cooledit. I know that it is not just my work (or the memory of my teenage experimenting) that proves how far one can get in Cooledit. Judging by an ambient album my friend Powmod made using 80% Cooledit Pro. I don't think he used preexisting samples, but rather the source tones and white noise that you can generate inside the program. Listen to the opening track generated entirely on Cooledit here , you can check out the full album here You have to be careful when experimenting around in Cooledit, but it can give you the
freedom to try extremely surgical but maximal effects. Even if you aren't a programmer, you can still feel how much knowledge of DSP and love was put into these effects by the quality of the output.
I have friends who swear by Adobe Audition 3.0, and I do believe that there is little reason not to (save for the annoying interface redesign). While Adobe Audition 3.0 is still a PC-only program that maintains the same algorithms that Cooledit 2.0 had (plus some new effects, of course), by the time you get to the version 4 (the first available for Mac), you have a crippled interface that frankly annoys the hell out of me. But for all the grief that Adobe’s cannibalizing of Cooledit has given me, I will admit that there are benefits to using it.
One of the nicest features of Audition 3.0 is the ability to use Photoshop-like selection tools on the spectral view, and once you select only a portion of the spectrum you can use most of the effects just on that spectral selection. It's great for doing manual dub delay inserts or anywhere from extremely subtle (if you keep it on only a high-pitched spectral range) to very drastic psychedelic effects. We tried to get in contact with the infamous Peter Quistgard while writing this article, unfortunately our search grew cold. You will find his name as the 'registered user' on practically every cracked copy of Cooledit out there.
secret hint 2: in the parametric EQ you can turn a few bands’ Q length to under 1 Hz (switch from the unquantified 'Q length' unit to Hz) and boost the volume quite a bit. I have yet to hear another software EQ that can produce such an eerie ringing ambience from lowering its Q length.
ps: Powmod also had some fun with the default 'Cooledit Pro 2.0' anthem that would load by default in the multitrack session. The Cooledit Rap can be found here
Availability: Cooledit 2.0 still floating around, Adobe Audition sold here
Practicality: Very light weight and fully functional wave editor, crash recovery
and loads faster/reacts faster than Adobe Audition’s reskinned version.
Next installment: Anarchy FX & Rhythms by Leighton Hargreaves
When I read the one sheet for the recent Oval album 'O', it described a self-discipline exercise that Markus Popp put himself through for the process of creating the album. He claimed that he had purposefully limited himself to, as he called it, a ‘very cheap’ PC computer running 'old software'. Very vague, but still intriguing. Since Popp seemed to rely entirely on making his own DSP programs, my mind tried to imagine what he could possibly sound like if he had reverted to the sound palette of an early album like 'Wohnton'. The end result was very interesting, and although I would have never guessed that it was made using 'old' software, I did enjoy listening to what sounded like someone tweaking the fuck out of some Karplus strong style physical modeling synthesizers (maybe Tasman?). Whatever was going on was undeniably beautiful and very distinctly Oval.
As I have digressed from the start, let me relate things back to the title of this post. Take an artist like Burial as a recent example. In his interviews, he talks openly about how he prefers to sequence his music by manually copying & pasting beats together in Soundforge. Back before multi-track computer recording programs were affordable, let alone powerful enough, this is how many of us (myself included) would get by in making sample-based music. To hear a popular musician who has a very slick production sound make a claim like this was a compelling statement for me to hear. And so in thinking about both examples, it reminded me of what I was doing on my computer at age 16 and feeling a bit nostalgic for the best programs of that age. I’ll be dedicating an overdue series of posts to going back a bit in time to before VST instruments, before Reason, before Abelton, before Fruity. Before Adobe cannibalized several companies both large and small, back when SGI was considered to be at the forefront of computer science. This was the time of the Aural Relics of Operating Systems past. I hope that you enjoy this trip in its several installments, whether or not you ever used the various relics to which I flash back.
As I have digressed from the start, let me relate things back to the title of this post. Take an artist like Burial as a recent example. In his interviews, he talks openly about how he prefers to sequence his music by manually copying & pasting beats together in Soundforge. Back before multi-track computer recording programs were affordable, let alone powerful enough, this is how many of us (myself included) would get by in making sample-based music. To hear a popular musician who has a very slick production sound make a claim like this was a compelling statement for me to hear. And so in thinking about both examples, it reminded me of what I was doing on my computer at age 16 and feeling a bit nostalgic for the best programs of that age. I’ll be dedicating an overdue series of posts to going back a bit in time to before VST instruments, before Reason, before Abelton, before Fruity. Before Adobe cannibalized several companies both large and small, back when SGI was considered to be at the forefront of computer science. This was the time of the Aural Relics of Operating Systems past. I hope that you enjoy this trip in its several installments, whether or not you ever used the various relics to which I flash back.
Vaz Modular stand-alone (PC only)
Crafted & Designed by Martin Fey. One of the first software modular synthesizers, and definitely the first to accurately mimic analog synthesis. With the advent of real-life modular recreations like the Synthé EMS emulation, or Aturia Moog Modular and Arp 2600 VST plugins, you’d rarely hear this monster of a synth mentioned. What makes this an oversight is that it was more powerful and diverse than any single encapsulated 'modular synth' out there (if you weren’t counting more open ended programs like Buzz, Reaktor or Max/msp). A VST plugin version was released before Vaz Modular was discontinued. You didn't connect modules together with wires in Vaz, rather you’d actually click on an in/out panel and choose from a list of available modules right on the screen. An interface that appears to confuse at first glance is actually pretty elegant: there is no 'structure' layer, what you see is what you get. And for being able to contain a massive modular monster on 1 normal screen sized area, you are able to get surprisingly deep with the configuration.
The Sequencer in Vaz was extremely intuitive and pleasurable to use. It had an instant randomization feature, note skipping, step slides and complex pattern changing ability. For the power that it offers, VAZ is a great addition to a live virtual synth setup. By today's standards, it is possible to not allow it to take up very much cpu, but you have to think ahead. Loading a preset patch would lend itself more to stability than adding modules live. Like Reaktor or other modular programs, too much in screen rewiring can easily crash it when running in a host sequencer. I have been able to chain together 5-10 Vaz Modulars in Cubase running as Vsts with little issue and just a bit of patience. Although I was always tempted to go immediately for the repatching because it's visible directly on the GUI, I’d suggest you fight that urge when running it as a VST.
As a synth-tinkerer fresh out of high school, I did quite a lot of my jamming and recording in Vaz modular. Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and be a fly on the wall in my old bedroom/studio, just to find out what the hell I did to make some of the sounds like this simulated crackling fireplace or this rubbery jam
There was a revelatory moment early on for me in using Vaz, when I had made a very simple snare drum and bass drum patch. I decided to sequence them independently of one another. While keeping the snare at a pretty regular beat I decided to hit the random button on only the bass drum pattern. Instantly, I felt like I had discovered the 'key' to an AE song like 'flutter' from the Anti-Ep, where there was still a cohesive, dance-y regularity to it, but with a seemingly human element of random rhythmic disturbance. listen here
Since I'm mostly on a Mac these days, I have to run Vaz under Parallels running Windows XP. I recommend you try it on your system and you'll be surprised how smoothly it runs even on an emulated Windows. Unfortunately there isn't a PC-vst to OSX-au converter.... yet. And lastly, Vaz modular 3.0 can also host other VST instruments & effects inside of it.
Available: still being sold here
More information: Vaz kvr forum here
Stay tuned for the next installment: Cool Edit Pro
Video for the awesome track "Chicken Hypnotism" off Fluorescent Grey's latest record "Antique Electronic / Synthesizer Greats 1955 - 1984 Part 1" on Acroplane. Watch the vid, download the album and be sure to peep Fluorescent Grey on Rotation this month on Gravity Halo's Rotation(s) blog!
Bay Area producer Robbie Martin, better known as Fluorescent Grey, has developed a reputation as a bit of a prankster over the course of his career. He's one of the few people on this planet that can say they not only earned a permanent spot on Autechre's shit list for releasing fake music under their name along with software enabling anyone to easily imitate their music, but he also instigated a massive beheading hoax video that exploded across the world's mainstream news outlets during the height of the new Gulf War's "terrorism" scare that solidified him a slot on the FBI's shit list as well.
Since releasing his debut on Isolate Records, Robbie has released on various labels, including his latest "Antique Electronic / Synthesizer Greats 1955 - 1984 Part 1" on the Irish label Acroplane, as well as on his own imprint - Record Label Records.
On "Antique Electronic...", Fluorescent Grey collages together thousands of loops and samples from early electronic records into a rich tapestry of sounds and grooves that pay homage to the pre-rave days of electronic music while rebuilding them in a way you've never heard before. It's an awesome record and has been in my rotation since its release last month. Contrary to this record though, much of his work focuses more heavily on original sound designs than it does on samples. His soundscapes range from minimal and ambient to extremely complex and mathematical and his ability to mold and manipulate electronics is second to none.
Get familiar with his back catalog, if you aren't already and stay tuned to the Rotation(s) blog because it's going to be an interesting month of insight and reflection from this talented artist! You just might learn you somethin', dagnabbit!
Since releasing his debut on Isolate Records, Robbie has released on various labels, including his latest "Antique Electronic / Synthesizer Greats 1955 - 1984 Part 1" on the Irish label Acroplane, as well as on his own imprint - Record Label Records.
On "Antique Electronic...", Fluorescent Grey collages together thousands of loops and samples from early electronic records into a rich tapestry of sounds and grooves that pay homage to the pre-rave days of electronic music while rebuilding them in a way you've never heard before. It's an awesome record and has been in my rotation since its release last month. Contrary to this record though, much of his work focuses more heavily on original sound designs than it does on samples. His soundscapes range from minimal and ambient to extremely complex and mathematical and his ability to mold and manipulate electronics is second to none.
Get familiar with his back catalog, if you aren't already and stay tuned to the Rotation(s) blog because it's going to be an interesting month of insight and reflection from this talented artist! You just might learn you somethin', dagnabbit!
