how possible is this?

[thirdworldlover]

hey all... just thought i'd throw a few questions for a project i'd like to do in the relatively near future. let ye chew on it a bit.

i'd like to start a group composed of maybe three instrumentalists and three people on laptops and other recording gear. the idea would be to create songs out of sounds found specifically on site. sample the smokerator, squash the hell out of it, drop the pitch, make something of a bassline, etc. this has been done in the studio by a good chunk of people, matmos, amon tobin, etc, but i'm not familiar with anyone who does this live.

the other kicker is that i'd like to be able to do this entirely without the audience's knowledge. i want to sample them, manipulate it almost past the point of recognition, and give it right back to em. reassemble an essentially bugged conversation into a melody of some nature.

so i want to start a band that would need to be able to recreate each venue as a secret, collapsible, realtime studio.

what kind of equipment would be necessary for this? software? any ideas on a cheap way to create bugs of good enough quality? does anyone know of any bands who have wholly or largely used found samples as source material? anyone know of any better questions?

and its on. thanks!


nd

[:prime-rate:]

this project could easily be done with max/pd patches. This type of music performance is pretty much the focus of the Music program at UC San Diego, as im sure it is in other academic institutions. Im sure you've heard of these programs before - max is the (commercial) polished of PD with a little bit nicer interface, but i do believe that they have Max for PC as well. PD is Free and can be downloaded with manuals at:
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html

Miller Puckette is the software engineer and the program is constantly updated - it can run on OS9, OSX, and windows. If you're into experimental music with realtime DSP, sampling, sequencing, etc. This is definitely the way to go.

One time i saw someone make a big balloon "dance" with sub-audible frequencies generated by pd - it was so cool - they also made water jump out of their buckets and stuff. You can do ANYTHING with PD - from building your own reverb algorythms, delays, data dumps, build sequencers, perform any type of DSP in realtime, use it to control any digital device. Check it out.

One time we actually used a usb video game controller to control sounds in a 10 channel environment. It was like painting with sound. Amazing.

[thunderboy]

Wow - gotta say that's a pretty cool concept. Sounds like it'll take a bit of practice to get things moving quickly, though...

jt

[baniak]

The technology is definitely there. There are some programs that do are really good at live manipulation of sounds, plus there are a bunch of looping pedals and rackmount gear that would be really effective too - just they don't have the sound processing capabilities that your asking.

Check out the IDM making group on Yahoo, they have an idea of good software to use in live sound manipulation situations. There are also a bunch of experimental music groups on Yahoo that would also be good to ask around in.

I think you have identified one of the drawbacks of your plan - how to sample people's conversations without them knowing it. I think people would notice microphone cables - so you might need to do some sort of wireless set up, otherwise, overheads.

Secondly, you would probably have to grab all your samples before the set starts, otherwise, you have to deal with feedback or bleedthrough (the music your are playing being sampled into your sample.) Could be interesting, though.

Is this more of an experimental music thing, or an attempt to make "accessible" music with experimental samples thrown in...

If it's experimental music, this leads to a third problem: This isn't meant to be meanspirited or anything - but experimental music crowds aren't that sonically interesting, and in general, neither are the venues they perform in. I can't imagine that you would get alot of smokerator/ clinking glasses/ obnoxious drunkard noise outside of a bar... and the last thing most bars want is... experimental music. I imagine most experimental music venues and crowds as being pretty reserved and quiet, not much noise to sample.

[trash180]

Hey,
This is slightly different than what you're talking about, but I just saw Drums and Tuba last night and they used an Echoplex digital pro to capture loops of themselves. The drummer wore headphones to sync, and they just played along. They had some pedals and the drummer had a chaos pad. Little mixers etc.
Superduper effective. The horn guy built up all these brass harmonies and stuff. It was sweet.

I'm going to see Captured By Robots on Thursday. It's a guy with robot as his backing band. I guess that's something different too.

I've considered your conversation capturing concept before, but in more of a party/DJ sort of way. Like Scanner, but with mics and people and stuff.

Maybe if it was at a club you could have centerpieces with mics in them.

[Professor]

Yep, it's been done, but that doesn't mean that it is not a cool concept that deserves to be expanded. Max (formerly from Opcode, now from Cycling74) is a software tool that can perform those kinds of stunts. I think the live musicians is really the key for you to avoid the 'experimental' stigma mentioned above - if you have guitar, bass and drums and augment with 'music concrete' types sounds you should be able to work that in a bar type scene.
Check out Tony Verderosa who performs in NYC as a solo drumset player. He plays three hour shows in clubs and keeps folks rocking the whole time. He uses an acoustic kit with an electronic kit mixed in, some samplers that he fires from triggers and a vocoder on his head mic. Live, one-man band techno - but not karaoke style, he fires the loops live and can turn them on and off at will during the performance.
There was a museum somewhere that did a project similar to your concept where they sampled the sounds of the patrons, manipulated them and played them back through a background music system while the patrons wandered through. They actually made the patrons aware at certain points and invited them to speak into microphones or read off certain lines.
There was also the silo project a few years back where people could log into a website, send an audio clip (talk into their microphone) and it would be played through a speaker suspended in an empty grain silo. The resulting sound would be picked up by mics and played outside the silo on PA speakers and broadcasted over the internet.
I helped a guy once on a multi-media performance piece where we put a contact microphone on a french chef's knife, fed the signal through MAX, looped it, filtered it, etc. with lots of random generated patches and played it over loud speakers. He then sat on stage slicing onions while the audience heard the manipulated sound in real time and smelled the onions wafting across the theater (with the help of a large fan). I'm not sure of the statement he wanted to make, but it was fun to do.

As for your project, you could use a couple of wireless lavalier mics and place them in key locations around the bar or club before the show - by the bouncer station, above the bar, with the mic dangling like a choir mic, in the bathroom - just use some gaff tape and hide them well so they don't walk. Feed the receiver outputs into your machines and off you go. I would experiement quite a bit at home before trying it live though, just so it doesn't come off looking weird instead of cool.

-Jeremy

[thunderboy]

I imagine most experimental music venues and crowds as being pretty reserved and quiet, not much noise to sample.

Actually, they're a loud bunch of obnoxious assholes, just like any other.

You can do all sorts of stuff...mic the AC unit, the fridge at the bar, the soda gun compressor, the cash register, put a cheap drum trigger on the floor, hang mics around the room...cool!
Baniak raises a good point about "resampling" what you are playing, tho...still, there's got to be a way.

trash180 - I've worked with D&T a lot - they have really refined their system and it's cool to know there are people out there who dig this stuff. Also, I've known JBOT (of CBR) for a while now, and have seen him go through that same process of refinement...that show is going to flip you out. Say "Fuck You, too!" to GTRBOT666 for me.

jt

[DJEmbarrassment]

Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters did exactly this sort of thing in the mid-60's at the Acid Tests - put mic's everywhere, loop, feedback, change speeds... AND have the Grateful Dead play at the same time.

Must've been incredible. But there's something funny about that Kool-Aid.

eric s.

[inverseroom]

I like ambition! This could be very excellent. You could always just get yourself a couple of Boss SP-303s though and probably do the tweaking faster (and without the possibility of crashing the computers, which seems to me nearly inevitable in a live setting, given that you won't know the power situation, etc., that it will be dark, that you won't have access to the Apple helpdesk, ha ha!).

Then again it would be cool to hire a computer tech to sort of stand next to you in a black suit, staring into space, at the ready for instant repairs.

John.

[Professor]

Hey didn't they have two guys with computers on stage at the end of the first 'Revenge of the Nerds' movie in the little Devo outfits?

The computer thing could be an issue as mentioned. You might consider experimenting with a CHAOS pad or that cool little Alesis AirFX pad. Then the audience gets to see a little bit of 'action' on the musician's part.

If you could find one of those old Casio sampling keyboards from the 80s at a thrift store or something you could have some real fun with that. Remember the ones they advertised with the kid recording a dog barking and scaring his sister? Sure a computer can do more, but you can also have some fun with 'vintage' gear.

-Jeremy

[JES]

depends on the level of control you want, too. You could easily get a kaoss pad and a cheap mic, sample the room sound that way and bend it around. In fact, that's something I'd like to do!

Best,
--JES

[thirdworldlover]

hot DAMN everyone. thanks much for the input. ESPECIALLY the software leads.

i'm still visualizing this as not overtly "experimental". again, i don't even want people to know that this is going on, just that there happens to be a few guys back there with some powerbooks maybe a few more cables than usual.

although if this were executed correctly, at some point the audience WOULD catch on. hopefully. we as human beings are very good at recognizing vocal characteristics, and this is why i'm really into the idea of sampling and splicing a conversation. bar/club noise is usually pretty standard, but the voices of our friends....

this is actually part of where this idea came from. the people at shows who could seem to care less about what's going on up on stage, what ARE they listening to? and how do i get in there? how do i interrupt it? we've all seen the pissy he-diva bitch for attention, and you can always demand it with the volume knob (i'm playing through a 120 watt 1978 orange myself... ) but this has been done for years and years and years.

in other words, i'm not even altogether concerned with making new sounds. i'm looking for new ways to interact with an audience with the technology that i know now exists.

and i LOVE that all of this brings up far more questions than it raises. for me, at least. i mean, how the hell would a band like this record a studio album?! plus its forcing me to get into actual MODERN things, as opposed to being all pissy about my gear being older than i am.


another request:

i see my specific role in a fully-realized version of this being on guitar and/or drums, and i plan on getting a couple of the echoplex digital pros (realtime samplers, good shit....) when the budget comes up for me. i'm going to do a little wandering around the yahoo sites and see what i can get from there, but if anyone knows anybody in the central florida area (gainesville, orlando, tampa) who'd be at all interested in something like this, give me a holler. not that this board ain't great, but there still ain't nothing like some crazyass brainstorm after a few pitchers. gets my blood moving like nothing else.

and back to work for me. cheers!

nd

[Professor]

I'm not sure of what is around in Gainesville, I'm sure the university has something. I know for a fact, however, that there is a good sized electronic music lab at the University of South Florida in Tampa and that may be a good source for guys that can help you out. As for how you do your studio album, don't worry, that will work itself out. I like the notion that your reason for doing this is to psychoacoustically invade people's conversations and regain their attention. You might not want to do much manipulating at all, just have someone walk around the place with a hidden wireless mic. Maybe put a lav mic at waist height on a hot waitress and have the sound continuously being sampled and played back with about a 30 second turnaround time between when they say it and when they hear it. The process will take care of any feedback and as long as the orders don't get confused....

-Jeremy

[I'm Painting Again]

this is great put your heart into this one..

maybe use pre sequenced midi patterns on some form of sequencer

i would use laptop/logic/battery probably..

set up mics all over the place sample and dump into whatever then you have some rythmic foundations to build on..think about tempo before hand and write guitar/drums/etc. parts to those tempos so you can have a good structure to start with..

those mics can be fed into a mixer and fx and somebody can get headphone mixes and then let them loose on the crowd..

goodluckalways

[phat-ass]

I've been working on something quite similar. I've been experimenting with Ableton Live and I've gotten some good results. PD seems pretty powerful if obscure.

phat