WFMU followed up with two three-hour shows dedicated to his life and work. Geeta joined the second show and shared some of her Schnitzler experiences.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Conrad Schnitzler
I have encountered the name Conrad Schnitzler many times while studying the history of electronic music. It wasn't until his recent passing and Geeta Dayal's excellent biography-obituary in frieze that I began to understand the scope and significance of his work.
WFMU followed up with two three-hour shows dedicated to his life and work. Geeta joined the second show and shared some of her Schnitzler experiences.
WFMU followed up with two three-hour shows dedicated to his life and work. Geeta joined the second show and shared some of her Schnitzler experiences.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
I'm not dead yet!
It has been almost a year since I've updated this blog. Rather than reiterate the usual excuses that are posted when a blog starts to grow stale, here's a video I made recently that shows off the Eventide TimeFactor's ability to self-oscillate.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Power Makes Music, and Power is Physics - TimTainment
Tim is a musician, currently living in Hamburg. His music career started as a listener and partygoer. In 2007 he created the TimTainment and started sequencing music.
Tim is interested and influenced in almost every kind of music so TimTainment stands for unusual music creations and different sounds. 2011 will see the launch of Tim's record label.
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job?
TimTainment: I define myself more by my music - that´s my main-work.
Obscure Robot: Does your other work ever influence your music, or how you think about music?
TimTainment: Oh yes - my work as a gardener has got a lot of influence to my music. There are so many sounds in the nature...they give me a lot of inspiration!
Music is everywhere if you really listen and it is a universal language too - that is what I think about music
Tim au Tech by Timtainment
Tim is interested and influenced in almost every kind of music so TimTainment stands for unusual music creations and different sounds. 2011 will see the launch of Tim's record label.
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job?
TimTainment: I define myself more by my music - that´s my main-work.
Obscure Robot: Does your other work ever influence your music, or how you think about music?
TimTainment: Oh yes - my work as a gardener has got a lot of influence to my music. There are so many sounds in the nature...they give me a lot of inspiration!
Music is everywhere if you really listen and it is a universal language too - that is what I think about music
Tim au Tech by Timtainment
Friday, February 4, 2011
Building Your Own Binaural Microphones - Silent Strangers, Part Two of Two
Silent Strangers is a musician who’s work has been published on the IDMf netlabel. His interview has been split into two installments.
Obscure Robot: Tell me about a particularly challenging track. What was difficult, how did you resolve that difficulty?
Silent Strangers: There is one on Anagram2:Ire that comes to mind. Its called Parallel Being. Difficult to get the loop phasing working right. I have a compound time signature of 13/4+6/4+9/4 for my main drum track. Keeping the rhythm tight enough to keep attention, and making it sit right with a 4/4 bassline was the challenge. In the first version(s) the drum track had a compound of 13/4+5/4+/9/4. Changing it to 6/4 allowed me to work with even number that phased easier with the 4/4 bassline. If I kept it 5/4, the compound would have been 27/4 versus the 4/4 bass. The bassline would have sync'd up perfectly, every 26 bars. And the bassline needs to be tighter in that track, you’ll hear it soon ;)
Hexeract by SilentStrangers
Obscure Robot: Tell me about a particularly challenging track. What was difficult, how did you resolve that difficulty?
Silent Strangers: There is one on Anagram2:Ire that comes to mind. Its called Parallel Being. Difficult to get the loop phasing working right. I have a compound time signature of 13/4+6/4+9/4 for my main drum track. Keeping the rhythm tight enough to keep attention, and making it sit right with a 4/4 bassline was the challenge. In the first version(s) the drum track had a compound of 13/4+5/4+/9/4. Changing it to 6/4 allowed me to work with even number that phased easier with the 4/4 bassline. If I kept it 5/4, the compound would have been 27/4 versus the 4/4 bass. The bassline would have sync'd up perfectly, every 26 bars. And the bassline needs to be tighter in that track, you’ll hear it soon ;)
Hexeract by SilentStrangers
Friday, January 28, 2011
It Depends If It's Good Or Bad Chaos - Silent Strangers, Part One of Two
Silent Strangers is a musician who’s work has been published on the IDMf netlabel. His interview has been split into two installments.
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job / studies?
Silent Strangers: Both, music has always been a huge part of my life. My parents put me in piano lessons at age 6, so its a part of me. My day job/studies intertwine, I attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale majoring in Visual Effects. I got into that to make animation/visual art to compliment my music. So music and my work are one in the same.
Left Cold Sampler by SilentStrangers
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job / studies?
Silent Strangers: Both, music has always been a huge part of my life. My parents put me in piano lessons at age 6, so its a part of me. My day job/studies intertwine, I attend the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale majoring in Visual Effects. I got into that to make animation/visual art to compliment my music. So music and my work are one in the same.
Left Cold Sampler by SilentStrangers
Friday, January 21, 2011
Music For A Desert Island - Shotguns Part Four of Four
Shotguns is a musician who hangs out on IDM Forums. His interview has been split into four installments.
Obscure Robot: What is your desert island software or hardware?
Shotguns: So, on the software tinge, I would have to go for Reaktor. Why? It's like having a warehouse full of circuits and modules that you can put together as you wish. Also, it includes 100's of friends who offer you things they've built for free.
In terms of hardware, I'm a nut for distortion and guitar pedals, so I'd have to bring a case of those and I would probably bring my trusty MS2000B. I love this synth. It's technically not the "best" synth I own, but it feels like an extension of my fingers and it just makes a lot of sense for me.
Obscure Robot: What is your desert island software or hardware?
Shotguns: So, on the software tinge, I would have to go for Reaktor. Why? It's like having a warehouse full of circuits and modules that you can put together as you wish. Also, it includes 100's of friends who offer you things they've built for free.
In terms of hardware, I'm a nut for distortion and guitar pedals, so I'd have to bring a case of those and I would probably bring my trusty MS2000B. I love this synth. It's technically not the "best" synth I own, but it feels like an extension of my fingers and it just makes a lot of sense for me.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Feedback and Technology - Shotguns Part Three of Four
Shotguns is a musician who hangs out on IDM Forums. His interview has been split into four installments.
Obscure Robot: Tell me about a particularly difficult track?
Shotguns: On the studio tip. I've got a few consecutive riffs and melodies that quite a few people have heard in at least 15 different forms. People only know it by the working name and it's actually one of my most appreciated tunes - but it didn’t exist in final recorded form. I couldn’t seem to get it right. I've tried it in every single way I could imagine.
But you know what happened yesterday? I had a decent draft of a track going. It was alright, but it was more of an album track, if you catch my drift? Well, I realized that it was in the key of F minor, so I casually tried to freestyle that one melody on top. It sounded pretty damn good, so I kept going with the other riffs and melodies and ended up bouncing it down. I played it to a few people today and they were over the moon.
Obscure Robot: Tell me about a particularly difficult track?
Shotguns: On the studio tip. I've got a few consecutive riffs and melodies that quite a few people have heard in at least 15 different forms. People only know it by the working name and it's actually one of my most appreciated tunes - but it didn’t exist in final recorded form. I couldn’t seem to get it right. I've tried it in every single way I could imagine.
But you know what happened yesterday? I had a decent draft of a track going. It was alright, but it was more of an album track, if you catch my drift? Well, I realized that it was in the key of F minor, so I casually tried to freestyle that one melody on top. It sounded pretty damn good, so I kept going with the other riffs and melodies and ended up bouncing it down. I played it to a few people today and they were over the moon.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Why Does Guns & Roses Suck So Much? - Shotguns Part Two of Four
Shotguns is a musician who hangs out on IDM Forums. His interview has been split into four installments.
Obscure Robot: Taking a step back - who do you consider to be your biggest influences?
Shotguns: Oh, wow.. That is a tough one to answer, but ultimately I am a sum of what I like. As asinine as it might sounds - I basically took what I liked as a kid and ran with it. I grew up playing a lot of old school game consoles. I also grew up listening to hip hop tapes, so I guess that's where sampling and the appreciation of our musical roots came from. Then when I figured out that my guitar pedals would work with any input - that was another ground breaking thing in my life... Then later in my life, I found out that people actually exploit all these things in their musical endeavors. I already did these things, but the 8-bit music scene, more alternative hip hop producers and the noise scene showed me that there were people out there already doing what I did and I found not one, but several places to belong.
Obscure Robot: Taking a step back - who do you consider to be your biggest influences?
Shotguns: Oh, wow.. That is a tough one to answer, but ultimately I am a sum of what I like. As asinine as it might sounds - I basically took what I liked as a kid and ran with it. I grew up playing a lot of old school game consoles. I also grew up listening to hip hop tapes, so I guess that's where sampling and the appreciation of our musical roots came from. Then when I figured out that my guitar pedals would work with any input - that was another ground breaking thing in my life... Then later in my life, I found out that people actually exploit all these things in their musical endeavors. I already did these things, but the 8-bit music scene, more alternative hip hop producers and the noise scene showed me that there were people out there already doing what I did and I found not one, but several places to belong.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Music is his Day Job - Shotguns Part One of Four
Shotguns is a musician who hangs out on IDM Forums. His interview has been split into four installments.
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job?
Shotguns: This is an interesting one for me, since I've chosen since day one to make music "my everything". It's not just simply a case of me figuring out something that I can exploit to make my day job - I genuinely don't want to do anything else with my life. However, since my interest in production is legit, I also do it on my "spare time" (if such even actually exists) and then I tend to explore genres and learn things from scenes and eras in music that are now "forgotten". So in one sense I define myself as a musician, but in another sense I am always going to be about exploring and interpreting things - so this is a tough one to answer. I am going to tackle it like this; If someone works a day job and still practices with their go-nowhere-band 4 days a night, they're a still musician, right? Well, I would most certainly do that even if I spent my days working at Mickey D's. While trying my best to not sound pretentious - I'm a musician.
Obscure Robot: Do you define yourself more by your music or your day job?
Shotguns: This is an interesting one for me, since I've chosen since day one to make music "my everything". It's not just simply a case of me figuring out something that I can exploit to make my day job - I genuinely don't want to do anything else with my life. However, since my interest in production is legit, I also do it on my "spare time" (if such even actually exists) and then I tend to explore genres and learn things from scenes and eras in music that are now "forgotten". So in one sense I define myself as a musician, but in another sense I am always going to be about exploring and interpreting things - so this is a tough one to answer. I am going to tackle it like this; If someone works a day job and still practices with their go-nowhere-band 4 days a night, they're a still musician, right? Well, I would most certainly do that even if I spent my days working at Mickey D's. While trying my best to not sound pretentious - I'm a musician.
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