G.N.O.

A real acousmatic concert, or so it seems

by lawrence

When Dajuin Yao 姚大钧 played at 2pi Festival 2006, people were surprised by the change from his well-known style: No more voice-based drone or mandarin-modulation. Instead, we heard a Terry Riley-like sine wave-based melodious concert! The lid of his laptop was closed (or seemingly so), and Yao was found head-down (probably eyes closed) and busy working with sliders on a MIDI-controller, indeed without touching the laptop at all. It’s also funny that a couple of minutes into the piece, a male voice was heard, but it was only half way through the piece did we (ok, I) see through the dim light a long-hair ghost-like figure standing in front of the microphone - it’s live! Who is this man? Didn’t Yao use the computer at all? Why the style change? Today Yao had a post on his blog demystifying all these issues. Below is my translation of the post (together with original pics), the original (Chinese) can be read here.

My concert at 2pi Festival this time (Nov 25, 2006) has been misunderstood by many people, even those who saw it live. Some said there were human voice samples involved, some even thought it was the air-strike siren sample (I did use such a siren during the final jam session). I think I’ll make a few clarifications here.

Usually Wang Changcun 王长存 and I would poke each other about what you gonna play before such a concert, though no one would disclose. Seeing I played with the laptop lid closed, he said resentfully afterward: “This is hardcore, man.”

I planned my gig in a way that I hope would bring something different to the festival. No typical 2pi-style loud volume, not even a single piece of sample, no human voice, no concrete sounds, no noise. I also tried to avoid rhythm. There was only pitched melody.

Basically it’s a customized instrument I made from scratch. The idea was to play the controller with my hands without looking at the screen of my laptop. The computer program is but the engine or circuit board as seen in traditional electronic instruments: you don’t play those but let them stay there. I even went as far as closing the lid of my laptop. (held it with a pack of cigarettes so that it doesn’t go into sleep mode)

Actually I’ve been thinking about performing like this for a couple of years, which I think would be helpful to self-immune from the pointless debate on either the lack of “visual element in computer music performance” or “body gesture”. In fact, maybe we can once again go back to the very essence of music by shunning these irrelevant discussions. Maybe.

Here is the basic structure of the piece/instrument I finally came up with the last two days before the performance.

The interface I used was Behringer BCF2000 controller. Behringer has always been a big knock-off brand which would certainly embarrass German. It specializes in ripping off the design of all kinds of musical instruments such as mixer or monitor speaker made by the American brand Mackie, and has them outsourced to the factories in China in order to sell at low price. However, BCF2000 is an exceptionally original design. One big selling-point is its unique motorized 8-channel faders.

In this piece I made, Behringer BCF2000 was not just a “controller” used to control the parameters but the instrument that I “played”. This is made possible by its 100mm long-distance faders and the sufficient spaces between the 8 tracks which allow independence of fingers and the precision of their movements. What’s more, the stickiness of the variable resistance is just about right, unlike Evolution UC-33 or Roland MCR-8, which are way too sticky to “play” fast-changing variables. The 16-channel (a number that beats everybody) Peavy PC-1600 could be the ideal controller had it has more spaces between the faders and longer sliding distance.

Also, the motorization feature enables the faders to be restored to their original positions automatically when shifting between pages. This virtually multiplies the number of faders and knobs. As a playing interface, it can be used to control enough number of parameters.

Below is the core tone generation part of my Max/MSP patch. The patch first calculates the frequencies of a just intonation scale as the global variables to feed the whole program. Due to the use of just intonation, the tune sounded a little off-key to the well-tempered ears, which added special flavour to it. This trick has been used by the likes of Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Robert Rich and Jon Hassell for dozens of years.

The main body of the patch was a simple 8-voice synthesizer, with 3 wave generators each voice (that’s 24 altogether). There were two sine waves with adjustable value of detune in-between, which added some richness to the sound. Also at work was a little bit of adjustable square wave in order to make the voice stands out when soloing. All these were written according to the basic rules of synthesizer design.

I also set some widely-adjustable portamento/glide. When used appropriately, it would extend the sound far beyond the limitation of musical notes. There was also a glide button at the lower-right corner of the controller, so that my fingers can add glide effect whenever I want during the glide-free 8-voice passages, resulting in a twisted, psychedelic note-bending sound. Besides, there were also panning control for each voice and reverb control for the main sound-out.

And the rest is the patch connecting the controller and the synthesizer, which can be recycled for future use as a subpatch module.

So you see, I don’t need to look at the screen when playing such an instrument, in fact I can even play it with my eyes closed. Of course, the above is just the instrument itself, content-wise it’s another story. All melodies were improvised manually.

The structure of this piece/instrument is a prototype of what will become a very complex live instrument. In the future I’ll be working on the organic algorithmic composing feature which is capable of generating complex melodies. The playing will still be done on the control interface only, with screen closed.

I was glad to have met my pisces new media friend Shen Ligong 沈立功 a few minutes before the performance. After jerking around for a bit I suddenly came up with the idea of inviting him to collaborate with me. I asked him to do anything he wants, regardless of medium. Be it modern dance or performance art, whatever. Art must be dangerous to be interesting. So we started without knowing what’s in each other’s mind. And there you had: Ligong the wicked pisces opened his voice and had a wicked time in the wicked just intonation pond I built.

[Photos: Wang Changcun, Wang Ke 王可. All photos were published on 潜艇日志 SUB LOG first.]

[Live recording] Livescope live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 15.6 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Li Jianhong live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 18.3 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Tsai Hsinyuan live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 34.5 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Lin Zhiying, Zhong Minjie at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 87.2 MB, 1 hour 3 mins and 31 seconds).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

This set is a bit different:

• Part 1 (00:00 - 18:19), by Zhong Minjie
• Part 2 (18:20 - 48:44), by Zhong Minjie & Lin Zhiying
• Part 3 (48:45 - 1:03:31), by Lin Zhiying

[Live recording] Final jam on 2pi Festival 2006

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 13.32 MB, 9 mins 42 seconds)

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Temporary pause of live coverage

by lawrence

Well, let me confess that today’s live coverage fell severely short of what I had expected. What I’ve uploaded are the fortunate surviver, most of whom were recorded by the artists themselves with their software (Max/MSP or Ableton Live)’s built-in recording function. Whether this is a good thing in terms of documenting a live concert is open to discussion, but at least you get top-notch sound quality. ^_^ More on that later. The festival is currently in the final phase, with half of the artists jamming on stage. We’ll set out for food later and this post marks the temporary pause of GNO’s coverage of the fourth 2pi Festival.

[Live video] Tsai Hsinyuan live at 2pi Festival 2006

by lawrence

Download the video (MOV format, 6.2 MB, 1 min 15 seconds).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Don’t frown on the poor quality, it was taken with a digital camera.

[Live recording] Ben Houge live at 2pi Festival 2006

by lawrence

Download the recording (part 1, part 2) (MP3 format, 12.7 & 11.7 MB, 9 mins 15 seconds, 8 mins 31 seconds)

China-based users can download it from here (part 1) and here (part 2) for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

[Live recording] Wang Changcun live at 2pi Festival 2006

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 16.8 MB, 12 mins 13 seconds)

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

[Live recording] Zafka live at 2pi Festival 2006

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 33 MB, 24 mins)

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

2pi Festival 2006 live photos update

by lawrence

Check out this Flickr photo set, or subscribe to the RSS feed of my Flickr. I won’t announce new photos here.

You’re encouraged to use the tag “2pifestival06″ when uploading your own photos of the festival to Flickr.

GNO in Hangzhou!

by lawrence

Escaping from the piercing coldness of Beijing, here we are in the rainy, moody Hangzhou. Tomorrow is the day we’ve all been waiting for, and you may have noticed a new, self-explanatory category in the sidebar: 2pifestival06. Click on it and all you are gonna see are the posts about the festival, starting with the donation plea. This time, our coverage of the 10-hour marathon will be heavily sound-based, which means you’ll be able to download the whole concert almost in real-time (MP3 format). So clean up your hard drive and stay tuned!

2pi Festival ‘06 updates

by lawrence

1. TSAI Hsin-yuan 蔡欣圜 and WANG Fan 王凡 have joined the festival. They are from Taipei and Beijing respectively. While Wang hardly needs introduction, Tsai is the exciting new blood of the Taipei scene. Playing with infra-red sensor glove, her sound is intense, visceral and occasionally sublime.

Here’s Tsai playing two days ago in Taipei. (Photo: Chiang Liwei)

Here are some videos of her from the same gig.

And here’s a review of one of her live concerts in Taipei by Chiang Liwei.

2. Post-Concrete and Little Sound have joined the label donation camp. Post-Concrete donates eight releases (three copies each), with two brand new items from Li Jianhong - the curator of 2pi Festival, and Wang Changcun.

Here’s the list:

• Helmut Schaefer - Isolated Irritation
• Dajuin Yao - Cinnabar Red Drizzle
• Pei - Ipatti-Tomorrow Will Take Care of Itself
• Zbigniew Karkowski - ElectroStatics
• Sarah Peeble - 108-Walking Through Tokyo at the Turn of the Century
• v.a. - China: the Sonic Avant-Garde (2 CDs)
• Wang Changcun - Parallel Universe (2006)
• Li Jianhong - A Brief History of Time (2006)

Three copies each. China: the Sonic Avant-Garde will be sold for 120 yuan (about $15), all other items 90 yuan. All sales go to the organizer.

Little Sound is a new Chinese label specialized in 3-inch CDR release. So far they’ve put out nine items with contribution from Hitlike, Tmdbbc (the owner of the label), Torturing Nurse, Shenggy, Shiz, Yang Tao & Earweego, and k1973. Each release is limited to 20 copies. GNO blogged about Little Sound two months ago. Do check out their discography too.

They will donate the following items:

• [ls005] Ronez - Summer (six copies)
• [ls006] Shenggy - Born to go into space (two copies)
• [ls009] K1973 - Xiao Pang Xian 小胖线 (two copies)

3. Click here to see some artworks of the festival (poster, ticket), and make good use of their official website for ticket booking and itinerary.

2pi Festival: Status of Donation | 二皮音乐节捐款进度

by lawrence

[下接中文版]

We are very happy to see there are already money flowing into the bank account of the organizer. Apart from expressing our gratitude to both the donators and the people behind the blogs and online forums that helped spreading the word, we also want to guarantee the transparency of this campaign by making the details of the donation available to everyone. Please click on the following link to view the current status of donation:

2pi Festival 06: Status of Donation (Web-based spreadsheet service which relies heavily on AJAX technology. Please use a modern browser that adheres to web standards. We recommend Firefox.)

Every penny will be documented. If you prefer to donate anonymously, please let Li Jianhong (monkyking2 [at] yahoo.com.cn) or Lawrence Li (lawrencelry [at] gmail.com) know so that your name will not be published.

[What’s this all about: The fourth installment of 2pi Festival - one of the most important experimental music feasts of China - is coming on Nov 25 in Hangzhou, China. As the festival has little funding, GNO has launched a donation campaign in order to ease the organizer’s financial pressure. Click here to read our plea in both English and Chinese, with details on how to donate.]

我们很高兴看到已有捐助款项打入主办者的银行账户中。在此除了要感谢捐款人以及帮我们传播消息的博客及网上论坛之外，顺带将捐款情况公布，以保证捐款行动的透明度。请点击以下链接查看捐款进度：

二零零六二皮音乐节：捐款进度（这是使用了大量 AJAX 技术的网上试算表文件，请使用支持万维网标准的浏览器。我们推荐 Firefox。）

每一个铜板都会被记录。如果你希望匿名捐助，请来信向李剑鸿（monkyking2 [at] yahoo.com.cn）或李如一（lawrencelry [at] gmail.com）说明。

2pi Festival 2006: Lineup and website

by lawrence

Here you go, eighteen units to be fit into ten hours, that’s averagely 30 mins each. So this is our own “Jujikan”. :p

1+1+1 (Fuzhou)
Alessandro Bosetti (Germany)
Audrey Chen (US)
Ben Houge (Seattle/Shanghai)
Dajuin Yao 姚大钧 (Berkeley/Taipei)
D!O!D!O!D! (Hangzhou)
Jimu 积木 (Hangzhou)
Chiang Liwei 江立威 (Taipei)
Li Jianhong 李剑鸿 (Hangzhou)
Lin Zhiying 林志英 (Guangzhou/Shenzhen)
Livescope (Hangzhou)
Torturing Nurse (Shanghai)
Tsai Hsin-yuan 蔡欣圜 (Taipei)
Wang Changcun 王长存 (Harbin/Shanghai)
Wang Fan 王凡 (Beijing)
Zafka 张安定 (Beijing)
Zhong Minjie 钟敏杰 (Guangzhou)
Ronez 周沛 (Guilin)

The official website is here (bilingual).

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Recent Comments:

• mabuya: this is undoubtly not 2007 but 2006.
• Simon: Another good gig happening in Beijing that week is a Noise Festival at D22. Torturing...
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