Archive for the 'Visual Music' Category

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GETS CONNECTED, TOO: 2007

Each year, a cou­ple of friends and I from Sioux City always make, and trade, our (some­times not) uniquely own “Best Of” mixes from our favorites of that year. But this year I decided to make a mix­tape of snip­pets from some of the songs I really enjoyed. I must admit that I strayed from my usual stern path of check­ing out the new releases and strug­gled, or maybe bet­ter put: was tempted, to push a lot of the “pop­u­lar records” into my final deci­sion. In the end, I opted to not include some of the pop­u­lar “top 10″ records (i.e. panda bear, beriut, the national, etc.),but I did have fun with it, in fact I had a blast! Here’s my com­pressed, com­par­itvely short, last hooray for the Best Music of 2007. Check it out:

BEST MUSIC OF 2007

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I am con­sciously not includ­ing the tracks played in this mix with hopes that you will help me, by com­ment­ing the artist/song, and revel in some of the sim­i­lar­ity, or at least knowl­edge, of this years’ fruits. I open up the com­ment board to you to post any­thing you recognize.

I have also com­piled an image of scenes/posters from some of my favorite movies I saw in 2007. By far, this doesn’t include them all, nor are they in any spe­cific order. I also have quite a list I of flicks I still am antic­i­pat­ing. Some of those being: Once, King of Kong, Into the Wild, Juno, I’m Not There, The Band’s Visit, The Life Of Reilly, and many oth­ers. Here’s a pop-up of that image:

best of movies 2007 big.jpg

Whaddaya think? Let me know if you dig ‘em and please rec­om­mend your favorite screengems to me as well. As pre­vi­ously indi­cated, I once again invite you to tag the movies you rec­og­nize via flickr (link to the image, use the “add note” func­tion) and help me bet­ter under­stand your thrills from the great, heavy, and joy­ous year of our lord, two thou­sand seven. Here’s to you and, more than well deserv­ing, TO US.

GETS UNRECOVERED

Gets Unrecovered cover.jpg

Bam! Check it out!

RECORD / MOVE

Dated news for some, new for oth­ers, I moved:

425 se 3rd ave #208
port­land, or 97214, usa

and I’m finally mak­ing my first Dash! record:

Titled Gets Unrecovered, it’s a col­lec­tion of some of the new, some of the old. Eleven tracks, also show­cas­ing a kind, bonus ele­ment includ­ing a Crystal Seth -> Righteous jam and a few selec­tions from a film score that I am excited about/equally proud of. It should be ready for release, via Marriage and The Prescott Family next Wednesday, coin­ci­den­tally when I fly back to my parent’s house, and my home­town, of Sioux City.

Lots to come in the near future includ­ing a The Righteous and Harmonious Fists Tour tour blog as well as some fat videos when I treat myself to a Christmas present of a dig­i­tal cam­era, or maybe a cat, I haven’t decided yet1. Also, I’ve been think­ing deeply about going into a clas­si­cal com­posers bend of in-depth research/background/history alpha­bet­i­cally and vibeing on some shit of their’s when it hits me hardest…we’ll see, maybe a new years res­o­lu­tion, amongst oth­ers. Hope you dig it. Also, a top 10 albums/movies of the year vid/pod-cast…on it!

1 Well, actu­ally I kinda have…realistically, a exter­nal hd. ya know? shit! that’s the mar­ket to be in these dayz, damn.

COMPUTING SYNESTHESIA

snapshot.jpg

Speaking of visual and con­cep­tual rela­tion­ships, I’ve been enjoy­ing some strange trips from using a unique soft­ware called RGB MusicLab. It was clev­erly designed by Kenji Kojima who explains it quite well by saying,

RGB MusicLab con­verts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chro­matic scale sounds. The pro­gram reads RGB value of pix­els from the top left to the bot­tom right of an image. One pixel makes a har­mony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is deter­mined by bright­ness of the pixel. RGB value 120 or 121 is the cen­ter C, and RGB value 122 or 123 is added a half steps of the scale that is C#. Pure black that is R=0, G=0, B=0 is no sounds.

It is not an impres­sion of paint­ings or pho­tographs of a com­poser. It reads a score from an image data directly.

So, as l recall one of the most influ­en­tial exhibits I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, here a few pieces I’ve come up with.

kit ans saw wave.jpg

Duration: 0:30
Tempo: 183
Instrumentation: 2 elec­tronic kits (right and left chan­nels), 1 saw wave (center)

hmm…an inter­est­ing start

dark.jpg

Duration: 2:09
Tempo: 440
Instrumentation: Choir (left), atmos­phere (cen­ter), orches­tral harp (right)

notice how dark the image is in rela­tion to the pitch

whoa.jpg

Duration: 1:05
Tempo: 470
Instrumentation: celesta (left), pizzi­cato strings (cen­ter), slap bass (right)

this one moves quite quick but is full of color

bigsurdriftwoodshack.jpg

Duration: 1:15
Tempo: 190
Instrumentation: music box (left), gui­tar har­mon­ics (cen­ter), wood­block (right)

sim­i­lar color through­out, crazy ending(?)

bachseal.jpg

Duration: 2:02
Tempo: 600
Instrumentation: harpsichord

Keep in mind, this is Bach’s seal in which he signed his music

dontfuckwithmechopin.jpg

Duration: 3:51
Tempo: 137
Instrumentation: Electric Piano (left), Car Engine (cen­ter), Electric Piano (right)

Spastic, yet rich and full

flush.jpg

Duration: 0:29
Tempo: 80
Instrumentation: Tubular Bells (left), Rain (cen­ter), Tubular Bells (right)

The flu­id­ity of this pic­ture seems to bring out an actual “song”

crazyassorange.jpg

Duration: 0:31
Tempo: 600
Instrumentation: Celesta (left), Dulcimer (cen­ter), Celesta (right)

I absolutely love this inter­pre­ta­tion, it is mad and fits the mood completely

princeofpeace.jpg

Duration: 1:27
Tempo: 309
Instrumentation: Timpani (left), Reverse Cymbal (cen­ter), Electric Piano (right)

Totally rad and con­ve­niently weird — a true stare.

marriageloft.jpg

Duration: 1:20
Tempo: 151
Instrumentation: Percussive Organ (left), Contrabass (cen­ter), Bottle Blow (right)

Reminds me of the moth and it’s journey