Compact Fluorescent Lamps

I’ve been lazy

here’s how to switch:

EnergyStar.Gov: CFLs

Excellent flash simulation of lighting conditions and different options…

K

Wasiff & Sapuri – Playing with the Boss.

Wasiff and Sapuri- Playing With the Boss (.mp3)

Wasiff uses a killer effects module from Boss, the Boss ME-50 (I’m pretty sure that’s the one). This is my attempt at strumming and switching effects at the same time.

Nothing here is edited (only two cuss words reversed…)-you can hear JJ and Wasiff laughing in the background. Some of the parts that sound edited are just me twisting the Overdrive/ Distortion knob through types. Next upload will be Wasiff’s amazing solo, part of the Golden Gate Sessions, Volume 1.

Exercise 4: Art and Music!

My buddy Michael was graduating from USC with his masters in EE. He’s been going to school part time while working at Boeing in Los Angeles for a while now, and this was a huge deal- getting done. It’s funny – Mike and I were actually undergrads together in the same program as well, and were both RA’s at neighboring dorms in West Lafayette as well.

Anyway, I wanted to make him something rather than buy something off the shelf. I’ve been trying to mix a nonstop set for a long time, and ‘make a CD’ from scratch. I think that’s one of my biggest ambitions – to design CD covers for bands and artists.

People these days are quick to say CD’s are outdated (due to MP3’s and digital formats), but I think half the beauty comes from the artwork accompanying an album- it is the real essence of validation/ differentiation. Any idiot can rip you a CD and say here’s Pearl Jam’s Vitology, but only when you hold the album sleeve, rich with carefully selected weight of paper, color, fonts and most of all, photography, do you enjoy the total experience.

John O’Reilly, PhD, a writer for the Guardian and other publications on new media, music, etc sums it best in the introduction to “Display Copy Only, a book of Intro Work”:

“If you’ve never bought a record just because you like the sleeve, you haven’t truly tapped into the pop experience. One of the items on the great rock band checklist is having and understanding that what holds an album together, or gives a single impact, is what is communicated on the sleeve. Because of this, it would be easy to believe that sleeve design is an act of the translation – of a musical idea into the visual concept delivered on the sleeve. It isn’t. Great sleeve design is the final edit, the last mix, the visual track laid onto the music. Although, chronologically, the sleeve is designed after the music, smart musicians know that in a curious reversal of logic, the sleeve comes first. It is the equivalent of the preface or introduction of a book, written afterwards but read first. It’s a navigation tool for processing musical data”.

Now I know that was one hell of a lengthy quote- longer than the post itself was before I stuck it in, but I guess very few people feel the attachment I do to printed artwork and its association with music. Or just printed artwork to begin with.

So to make this CD, I didn’t want to start making music from the start – I just wanted to create a flawless mix of sorts. I remember noticing how the track numbers ticked over silently the first time I was listening to a nonstop mix on CD- and I was mesmerized. The show went on, but the music was flawless- no breaks! Hello, mixing! I had to be able to do this, some day!

I picked out a lot of tracks for Mike’s mix- very weird ones that are mixed as well as I ever have to date, but I made sure they were all in key as well- preserved the aural element too. I used Ableton Live 6 to mix, and Mixed-In-Key 3.1 to tune all the tracks/ make sure the mix wasn’t jumping key by a mile when going from track to track. Here’s the tracklisting, along with comments on any edits I made myself:

1. The University Of Southern California Trojan Marching Band: USC Fanfare + Tribute to Troy – Had to throw this one of course! Ends on a warped note of a transition…
2. Prefuse 73: The End of Biters-International (high-speed akshun) – Stepped up the tempo of a badass track and it sounded pretty wicked, I think…
3. Groove Armada: Lovebox (featuring Alan Watts and Farzaad Piraacha The Dick) –
   So I came up with this fictional Farzaad Piraacha character, from the upper crust of Karachi, to tell us what his likes and dislikes are, and I recorded it onto the track. I also threw in the voice of Alan Watts later on.
4. Cari Lekebusch: Shaded – Compuphonic & Kolombo Remix
5. iiO: At the End (Scumfrog Remix)
6. Boys Noize: Oh! (A-Trak Remix) - A-Trak is Kanye West’s DJ and brother of the French Literature PhD student who forms one half of Chromeo, David Macklovitch
7. Andrew Bennett Rico Soarez: Light of Hope (Jody Wisternoff Remix)
8. The Prodigy – Girls
9. Justice: Waters of Nazareth: Blackwater Fiasco (originally fucked by Erol Alkan) – yes, the annoying lawyer at the end is me, reading out a testimony accusing implicating Blackwater, the private security firm that went pretty haywire in Iraq last year…
10. Michael Jackson: Billy Jean (introduced by the Blackistani Stallion) – and who’s the Blackistani stallion? That’s right…
    

Here’s a picture with a link to the continuous audio file (it’s a 22MB .m4a audio file, and will play in itunes or winamp – don’t worry).

The interesting thing is that if you click the link to the corresponding iTunes podcast, you can download it, and it’s broken down by tracks that you can skip back and forth with you iPod. For some reason the podcast refuses to show up in searches, which is why I’m saying screw it – I don’t have the time to beg Apple to fix a problem that’s really not a problem!

OK, so that covered the fun I had getting the music together. The artwork was half the fun. The image above is the flyer I made for Mike’s invite to his BBQ. It wasn’t in line with the music completely, but I wanted to create a derivative of it nonetheless- the CD represents celebration and reunion (3 other Purdue people flew out to LA just for the USC graduation weekend) – so here’s the cover image:

Here are some of the back cover image:

The picture on the bottom right is us at Breakfast Club in 2003! The barcode is a REAL barcode generated from the numbers 47906 90007, which are the zip codes of West Lafayette and South Central Los Angeles respectively. The image on the top right is of Sapuristan, the newest member of the UN (the map is of Pakistan combined with California):

I decided that I didn’t just want to give him a blank, shiny CD with ‘Maxell’ or ‘Recordable Media 74min’ written on it. I went out to OfficeMax and bought a spool of white-label CDs that are blank on top.

Perfect.

I went to Kinko’s every day after work that week – I’d get to California Ave. at like 11pm, and then work on the presentation even further. I wanted to have an outlined decal placed on the CD itself. The staff at Kinko’s was great help. I wanted the word /DONE// in the same font as it is on the flyer and the CD cover, on the CD itself. So I had a decal printed, and applying it can be tricky:

Original Decal

Application

Decal application – /DONE//!

CD all set!

Closed front cover

Sapuristan Image

Now, enjoying the CD…that’s a whole other story. Los Angeles- all over again…hah. But there have you have it- quite the exercise in art and music…

-Sapuri

PS- if you need a sleeve designed- holler! These are only single sheets, but I made a whole 16-page pamphlet for my Print media class back in school. I need work!

PPS – ‘Exercise 4′ is the name of my favorite track by Bent.

On the direction of electronic music, abstraction and the Stanford CCRMA.

DISCLAIMER/ Request

You must ignore the pseudointellectualism pervading the title of this post. Stanford campus rubbed off on me in a bad way. Forgive me, ahead of time.

Bits and bytes galore in this world, man once upon a time, decided to add music to the digital madness.

Electronic music has been around for a while, and I’d say for almost 20-25 years now, it’s been safe to declare in public that you’re into electronic music without getting a ‘What a weirdo” look from the person holding the cheese on a cracker across you at that party you’re trying so hard to be social at.

Last night, a friend of mine invited me to a musical performance/ concert at Stanford University’s CCRMA – Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (pronounced ‘Karma’, as I overheard). Andrew used to work at Cypress Semiconductor with me, but left to pursue his MSEE at Stanford, focusing on music and audio technology. So between the two of us, I think we’re interested in discovering new music. We left the concert still waiting for that smack in the face- the one that says

“I AM NEW MUSIC. I WILL KEEP YOU UP TONIGHT, MAYBE TOMORROW AND THEREAFTER, YOU SHALL SPEND A GOOD PORTION OF THE NEXT FEW MONTHS SEEKING ME OUT.”

This is where it gets tricky. I’m not a musician, or a music reporter or journalist. All I know is that I’d always like to see what else is out there. You know, electronica seems to have come a really long way since…well, I don’t really care. Let’s say since when I grew aware of synthesized music. Yes. Let’s put the marker at 1985- when my dad was playing Oxygene on the hi-fi. At that time, he kept telling me “Imagine! One man is playing all this!”

With a plastic gun in my hand and my foot atop a red Tonka pickup truck, I found nothing exciting about one man making a bunch of music all together. For all I knew at that age, that was how all music was made.

Oxygene was actually released in 1976, so we all know electronic, one-man shows are nothing new. It’s also no secret that software audio composition has become so accessible, that it’s now bundled with your computer (Mac OS at least with GarageBand- Vista can’t be too far behind). The era of the laptop DJ has been upon us for quite some time.

No problem.

It’s okay to make music with your laptop. Just like the vinyl jockeys got over people moving to Pioneer CDJs, so will all ‘acousticians’, people who make only acoustic, natural music. Actually, a lot of beauty comes from an acoustician, someone from the purely analog domain, tinkering with elements of the digital domain; i.e. software.

Actually, let me back up, and create this little chart:

So, let’s take a look. On the left are the purest of the pure- acousticians, playing acoustic music. The best way to describe this craft, is that if power lines went out across the world (and let’s add 24 hours for all uninterruptible power supplies and monster laptop batteries to die out and be unable to recharge) these guys and gals would still be able to entertain us over a campfire. No electricity needed. No electronics required. Moore’s law has jackshit of an impact on their craft. Now that’s powerful.

Moving to the right, we have the analog and digital folks. Now, I think my analysis here is probably shortsighted. Drop me a note or email me if you think I’ve done this wrong, but I’m lumping these two together in this way, because both crafts need electricity to be worthy.

Analog electronic music is stuff that still needs you to well, play an instrument of sorts. I can’t think of a better example than the synthesizer. Moogs, Kurzweils, and assorted other synths are pretty analog, even though the music they end up making is through modularly arranged electronic circuits. You end up changing sounds by tweaking knobs, hitting keys- you get the point. Andrew described it as follows: “When I’m listening to the Moog on headphones, it’s like my head hurts. You know…you know there’s just something else going on in there…”

Purely digital composition, I have to say, is something you can get away with, using just a laptop. Today, lots of tools, such as Logic, Sonar, Reason and even Operator from Ableton allow you to come up with sounds, purely using your laptop. There are MIDI interfaces you can use to make your life easier; and those emulate analog interfaces, but in the end, everything that your ears hear is generated by the computer.

++++++++PISS BREAK: THIS POST IS GETTING OFF TOPIC AND THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A PISS TO RECTIFY STRAY THOUGHTS++++++++

Back.

So, all of this started with the concert at Stanford. The CCRMA routinely holds events free and open to the public- the beauty of endowments and academics (thank you).

As a research center, you’re naturally going to invite those who push the envelope. Something is only worth researching at the graduate level, and even more so, at elite institutions like Stanford, if it’s pushing the envelope, in whichever discipline we’re talking about.

Last night, the invited members were from SARC (Sonic Arts Research Center) in Belfast, Ireland. I think anyone invited to the majestic Knoll mansion at Stanford has to be pushing an envelope of some kind. In a mean and evil cut to the chase, I have to say I couldn’t tell what envelope was being pushed in this case.

Neither could Andrew.

Here’s the program we received:

On the program:
Fragmentos for Soprano Sax and Live-Electronics by Pedro Rebelo with Franziska Schroeder

Net vs Net by Alain Renaud and Juan Pablo Caceres

Netrooms by Pedro Rebelo

Pixel Parasites by Brian Cullen

Instrument of Dissection by Pedro Rebelo

Over Hear by l a u t.

I’d like to make very clear here, that when I say I was disappointed, this is in no way, a personal attack on the performers, or research being performed at SARC for that matter.

A lot of the music was abstract, and a lot of the performances were very experimental. Experimental music is experimental. Just as the majority of experiments run in research labs come up with no results, and the scientist goes back to the books and comes revises the hypothesis, so should experimental music.

The buck stops here though. Experimentation in art of any sort can never have a deliverable. To request ‘results’ from PhD programs in music, arts, etc, is already difficult enough. Yet there needs to be a bar; a standard by which you judge the quality of the research, work or in this case, performance.

The performances were improvisational for the most part, and were enjoyable to listen to and be a part of. There was an interesting piece where 3 different artists in different places in the world, were broadcasting sounds from microphones plugged into their laptops. To add to this, all were live at the same time, and all were in a very interesting and vicious feedback loop. The trouble is- it got repetitive, and to be shockingly honest, this was not the first time people in different parts of the world had collaborate in real time together. Here’s an interesting article from Wired’s blog, back in January 2007 about real time, online collaboration. Or you could just check out e-Jamming itself.

I do however, wonder if were hearing the best work of the respective performers. Then again, they weren’t here to put their best foot forward. Or should they have…?

Someone once said “I don’t believe in art for art’s sake”. Neither do I- but that’s a personality thing. Coming back to what defines cutting edge performance, or research however, I initially started with someone having to push the envelope to qualify. Let me try and describe why I didn’t think anything new was offered last night.

If you’ve ever heard Aphex Twin, especially the Drukgs album, there’s an intense lack of tempo, which in my opinion, defined the music we heard last night. Random hits, random notes, at random times. People say this avant garde, but I say, that was avant garde 10 years ago. I bought that Aphex Twin album ages ago. And think about it- I bought it in a record store in West Lafayette, Indiana (of all places, yes…I know). If it was commercial music, then it was…say it with me…not underground. And that implies it that it wasn’t extremely cutting edge.

Innovation comes from (but is not limited to) essentially two places:

The streets: home to urban settings where people must adapt to their surroundings with minimal resources. The freshest art and music usually comes from the streets.

The mansions: home to people well off enough to not worry about putting food on their table. With the distractions of survival removed, a creative mind tends to be extremely constructive and innovative. Also, even if theses comfortable folk are unable to put their mind into creative mode, they are in a place where they can influence creative, but poorer minds, and fund them.

As I sat in this fantastically maintained mansion, the Knoll, atop a hill on Stanford’s sprawling campus, this was the disappointment I felt- here was the perfect combination of the two ends I just described above, not bringing anything shockingly new to people who were dying to have their aural senses provoked.

This was digital music played in an overtly analog manner- no rhythm, no tempo. this is beautiful in its own right, but my main observation here is that we were sitting at the CCRMA – the center for computer research on music and audio. Computers are inherently digital, inherently electronic. Then why are we still doing something thats begging to be analog- namely the kind of music performed last night?

Maybe I’m just a grump. Maybe things are just heading full circle. Man came from acoustic, moved to analog then digital, and is now reverting back to the first element – acoustic.

I guess this has all been a long-winded way of saying:

1. Electronic music is alive and well (duh).
2. Stanford’s CCRMA is housed in a fucking amazing building.
3. Andrew and I left with our socks still on (i.e. nobody knocked our socks off).
4. Ambient Electronica needs to do some serious soul searching. Maybe if we could make it an entity of some sort…like a human manifestation, we could it put on a bicylce and send it to Burning Man or something. That would sort it out, I think.
5. The musicians we saw last night are talented, but I’m sure they have more in them. Maybe jet lag was not helping.
6. Online music collaboration is headed for [YOUR GUESS HERE]
7. I should have spent my Saturday making music rather than bitching about it.
8. One song has been on repeat the whole time – Hurricanes, by Synthar. Click here for the band’s Myspace page.
9. This post has been written at the three different coffee shops marked on this map:View Larger Map
   First place, the wireless went out. Second place, I ran out of fucking change for the meter because the coffee refill robbed me of the last 50 cents in my pocket, so I had to leave. The last place, well, it’s the closest place to Amoeba Music, which is responsible for me still driving a ‘92 Toyota Camry instead of a snazzy new European import. But hey, it gives me 23 MPG, still.

Peace and love.

-K

Made from the best stuff on earth. No, it’s not Snapple.

Now that it’s no longer a hipster drink (especially now that even the Google main cafe realized it was costing way too much to hand this out- now relegated only to the healthy cafe), this really is made from the best stuff on earth. I’m only saying that because anything that has floating strands of culture in the drink has got to be good for you, as I was told by my parents. Either that, or I’m just still way too third-world.

The best protest sign. Ever.

So I’m supposed to be writing a tech paper, but Stumbleupon’s Flickr button took me to this…just fantastic!

 

PROTEST!!!

 

 

 

 

Hear Me Now.

when votes don’t count, and collateral damage becomes a part of the daily news, you scream inside. you wonder why only your religious and cultural affiliations remain the ties that make you sleepless at night, when humanity’s ties alone should make it hard to breathe with the carnage before you.

when your prayers go unanswered and you’ve pushed technology to the limit, but some people remain more equal than others, your insides yearn for someone, something to hear the aching within.
this heart of mine came to me as just a fistful of flesh, but as my fist grew, more than just the flesh grew with it. all this studying, all this working, all this partying. our eyes are open but we are sleeping. there is a soul here that tosses and turns as suicide bombs answer conventional ones that rain from the sky.

one man’s gain is always another’s loss. like energy, it cannot be created or destroyed. but like gravity, the truth remains that which you can never escape without altering your natural surroundings,or more importantly, lying to yourself.

we have done beautiful things. we have espaced gravity for years at a time, yet even the space traveler yearns for the pull of the earth. even the fortunate few like to enjoy the free things in life, for the best things in life are still free. no corporation owns the thing closest to you- your conscience.

when i speak out against shock and awe delivered by the ton, i risk reprisal myself. when i don’t speak out, i risk dementia and anghuish, courtesy of only my own conscience slowly setting in again.

oh lord, wherever you are, hear me now.

i need you.

we need you.

teach us to know and love one another once and for all.

(Click above to see original)

Urban and Urbane – A Manifesto

Living in an urban environment calls for compromise, and acceptance of imperfection. Trading off a perfect, cookie-cutter suburban lifestyle for a city life less perfect means that more times than often, you’re working to beat the odds. You overcome pollution. You overcome high rents and living costs; your savings account is usually drier than our damns. You put up with the power outages; you put up with putting up for no reason; the list is endless. It’s in your blood as a city dweller: you are resilient- and you will overcome.

Similarly, I put up with not having a digital camera. I put up with not having a scanner. All of my pictures were shot on a 35mm film camera handed down to me, scanned on university scanners, digitally manipulated on a computer and printed out on plain card. Photography purists will writhe in pain because my work is neither film nor digital. It is a hybrid approach of beating the odds, keeping it cheap yet wholesome: the description of your daily life as a city dweller. You are urbane in the most unassuming of ways.

I guess Los Angeles and Lahore have more in common than people think: they’re both cities that people love to hate yet can’t live without. They’re crowded, they’re rich and poor at the same time, and they’re ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Most of all, they are resilient. They are hopeful.

You are Los Angeles. You are Lahore.

Time to stop.

BT Remixes

In order to combat the lethargy that’s taking over my mind these days, I’ve decided to put up a special page for all the remixes I made for BT. None ever won the competition (well…I submitted them 2 months after the deadline- that’s why!), so they’re unmastered, and most were done after the competition because I was learning to play with Ableton Live. Back then it was at version 2.0! These are all from the ‘Emotional Technology’ album. My favorite’s the ‘Milder Force of Gravity’ remix of ‘The Force of Gravity’.

www.studiosapuri.com/BT