SOUND: Some sound context
Posted February 1st
I have been thinking about the musical and performance context of where my Zipper Remixer should sit, questions such as; how is the interface played? Is it used as an instrument to create original souds, or is it more like a DJ tool? What musical aesthetic do I want to be demonstrating it with?
Today I stumbled across this video of an artist called “Tim Exile” who has released a number of albums of his electronic “sample” glitch style music using his custom built patches and software based on Reaktor. As a fun experiment he decided to mash-up the inauguration of Barack Obama using his tools, live as it was broadcast
I realy admire Exile’s work, and his mentality of live performance, prefering total improvisation as opposed to scripted and similar sets. To quote an interview with him by his part-time employer (Native Instruments) discussing his hardware and software setup;
It’s a Reaktor instrument for live improvised sample manipulation that has evolved over the last two years. Originally it was a DJing tool that allowed me to totally restructure finished tracks using laptop keyboard keys and controllers, but it has developed into an improvisation instrument which I can use to layer sounds, play in synth riffs, sample a live mic input, then process and re-sequence everything.
The aesthetic ideal is to build an instrument which can be played in a virtuoso way, the way I was used to playing my violin. I wanted to move away from the play-it-safe mentality where laptop performers prefer to keep performance input to a minimum in favour of keeping their live sets sounding as similar as possible to their studio work. My live sets are always really raw and rough sounding, but that’s because all the manipulation that is going on is completely live. There are no presets and nothing is planned.
I think that this style of live sampling and perfomance would definately suit my Zipper Remixer interface, and I really like the aspect of Exile’s work where he can sample and manipulate a live mic input aswell, I will consider the possibilities of this for my interface.
Next I will continue to look closely at similar artists to Tim Exile and try and isolate some samples, synth loops and timesteps that are reflective of this genre of music.
Create Digital Music Blog (Obama mash-up post)
