Here it is, footage from the very first Workshop/Seminar series that The Centrifuge has organised, at Futuresonic Festival in Manchester, May 2009. Apologies for the sound and video quality, limited budget an’ all that!
Street Rave Footage to follow…
1) Scrubber Fox, Mr Underwood & DJ Stuff – Microcontrollers & the physical environment: an sonic exploration of microcontrollers, tactile sensors and mechanical devices.
www.myspace.com/thescrubberfoxspace / www.mrunderwood.co.uk
Sam Underwood and Gary Naylor are electronic musicians hailing from Cornwall and Wigan. Both ‘inventor makers’, they have come together to develop their first collaborative piece for the festival. This will see electronics, interactivity and music collide. Futuresonic will play host to the unveiling, showcase and performance of their work.
Mr Underwood and Scrubber Fox Part 1
Mr Underwood and Scrubber Fox Part 1
2) NeuTek – www.thecentrifuge.co.uk
Adventures with Piggy Tracker : the pocket studio/performance package
NeuTek (aka Dean Forrest) is an Oslo-based musician and programmer, releasing music exclusively on the The Centrifuge netlabel. He uses bespoke open-source tracker software and portable devices to create technical, emotive and challenging ‘chip-glitch’ music with a dynamic and energetic performance aesthetic.
Piggy tracker is a light weight, multiple platform, powerful music composition tool. In this seminar you will see piggy’s features demonstrated and learn how to compose a song and play it live, all within your hands and off a couple of AA batteries. The utilisation of Piggy tracker has led to the world’s first live “wireless street rave†– the music is created and manipulated live by NeuTek and the Boombot Soundsystem’s speaker-suits form a mobile PA.
NeuTek
3) Raw Hedroom – www.myspace.com/rawhedroom
Jazzmutant Lemur Masterclass
Gareth Williams, otherwise known as Raw Hedroom, has been making waves of late. His recent work has been climbing Beatport’s techno charts and he is one of highly influential German techno label, Trapez’s most recent signings. His own brand of electronic music is technical and often melodic, yet puts the real emphasis on pushing an infectious groove.
After a classical upbringing, thanks to his music-teaching mother, Gareth was seduced by bleeps and buzzes at a tender age and has been practising his dark art ever since. An early adopter of the Lemur, Gareth uses Jazzmutant’s groundbreaking touchscreen controller alongside Ableton Live as as a powerful performance and compositional tool. Being able to “touch” and physically manipulate sounds intuitively allows him to deliver a precisely crafted set. In the studio it lets him capture the human error and groove which is missing from a lot of clinically sequenced electronic music.
This workshop will demonstrate the following aspects of the Lemur/Live partnership while showcasing a number of features from Lemur’s new V2 firmware update:
Performing a powerful hybrid live/DJ set with the Lemur/Live combination
Using the Lemur with Live as a powerful sound-design tool
Natural and musical sequencing with Lemur and Live
Raw Hedroom Part 1
Raw Hedroom Part 2
4) Ben Eyes (aka Quip) – www.quipmusic.co.uk
Live Looping techniques using modular software environments
Using software it is now possible to create live loops on the fly, in a similar fashion to the popular looper pedals. However the modular possibilities of programs such as Audiomulch allow far more creative use of looping. Ben Eyes will be discussing some of the techniques he uses for performance and composition. He will also show off the new mac version of Audiomulch and show how you can use Ableton as a Live Looping platform.
Quip
5) Richard Devine – www.richard-devine.com
Jazzmutant Lemur Masterclass
As an artist his productions are frequently intricate, heavily processed and intense, being held in the highest regard by journalists, music fans and seminal artists such as Autechre and Aphex Twin alike. He has released 4 full-length albums on Schematic, Warp, Asphodel, and Sublight records and has performed his own ear-tearing music mayhem worldwide.
He has done film score work for Touchstone Pictures, sound mangling for Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, designed countless commercials and done sound design for companies from uber-cool audio companies like Native Instruments, Ableton and Access to car firms such as Audi and BMW!
Being the kind of guy who loves to use (and abuse) any new technology he can get his hands on, he took to the Jazzmutant Lemur like a (rather twisted) duck to water.
In his workshop he will demonstrate how he has been using the Lemur for all of the above! He will discuss how he’s taken advantage of Jazzmutant multitouch technology in multiple situations:
DJing
Playing live
Working in the studio
Producing sound design
The workshop will feature use of the Lemur in a variety of applications, including Ableton Live, Native Instruments Reaktor and Traktor, Cycling 74’s Max/MSP and more.
Richard Devine Part 1
Richard Devine Part 2
