chromedecay studio look: TouchOSC with Ableton Live and BigSeq

I recently recorded a video that demonstrates using TouchOSC, OSCulator, Ableton Live and AudioDamage’s BigSeq plugin. TouchOSC is an interactive control surface that outputs OSC messages, which can then be converted to MIDI notes and CC data by OSCulator and other programs.

In this video, check out how much fun it is to control BigSeq with TouchOSC!


chromedecay studio look: TouchOSC with Ableton Live and BigSeq from chromedecay on Vimeo.

Links:

TouchOSC
http://hexler.net/touchosc

OSCulator (for converting OSC to MIDI)
http://www.osculator.net/

Ableton Live
http://www.ableton.com

AudioDamage BigSeq
http://www.audiodamage.com/effects/product.php?pid=AD009

Technical Information:

Screen recording was done with iShowU HD. This is my first time using it, and I’m quite pleased so far.

http://www.shinywhitebox.com/ishowuhd/main.html

The audio recording during the screen recording wasn’t so good because I was using the MacBook’s built-in mic. Attempts to get my external Firewire audio interface routed into iShowU HD through Soundflower were unsuccessful at first, but I’ll make sure I get that working for future videos.

The iPod Touch was recorded with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 camera.

chromedecay music on Vimeo

I’m pleased to present a nice piece of art from the Vimeo community. Charlie McCarthy, whose videos we’ve been enjoying for some months now, has used an excerpt from Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable’s “Raindays” in one of his latest videos on Vimeo.


Last Sunday around 10am from Charlie McCarthy on Vimeo.

Charlie’s been producing gorgeous slabs of color and texture on Vimeo for a while now, blowing us away each time. Thanks for including us, Charlie!

Also, there’s a nice little moody piece of downtown instrumental hip-hop video from the chromedecay sketchbooks:


chicago (as seen by car) from chromedecay on Vimeo.

summer music progress: lazy, but enjoyable

Summer arrived with much anticipation of working on lots of music, but it didn’t materialize quite to expectations yet.

working on beats
above: working on beats in full summer mode

Still, some music has been worked on, and a lot of guitar has been played (bringing with it a new appreciation for the instrument and its possibilities).

bill van loo - working on a guitar piece
above: Bill Van Loo working on a guitar piece

Here are a few recent bits to check out:

6-16-2008 snippet

8-1-2008 beat snippet

By the end of the summer, I should hopefully have a new chromedecay release available; still not sure whether that will be a digital-only release via iTunes and the other digital distributors, a CD + digital release, or a free chromedecay digital release.

spring sale, new digital release, and video & photos from Sync08!

CHROMEDECAY SPRING SALE!
As spring slowly arrives, the overflowing shelves of chromedecay releases needs to get cleaned out. For a limited time, you can now pick up any two chromedecay releases for $15!

Check out our sale page here:

Spring 2008 Sale!

NEW DIGITAL RELEASE: BUBBLEGONE – RECORD OF MEMORY
I’m very pleased to announce the latest chromedecay digital release. I’ve played a number of shows with Ann Arbor sound artist Bubblegone, and cdigital011 marks the first release by Bubblegone on chromedecay.

“Record of Memory (live)” explores thought and memory through aural media. Like memory, the sounds and textures are sometimes clear, sometime muddy, often scattered, and always evolving.”

Bubblegone: Record of Memory (live)

BILL VAN LOO & J. SCHNABLE – LIVE AT SYNC08
The recent Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable live performance at the Sync08 performance was quite a success. You can check out photos and a full-length video of the performance below. Thanks to all who attended & supported us!

Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chromedecay/sets/72157604033684796/

Video:
http://www.vimeo.com/821575

new videos available

I’m please to present two new videos, now available on both Vimeo and YouTube. The first is a full 40-minute performance from bill van loo & j. schnable at the Sync07 festival last year. The second is a short piece of timelapsed footage, with an ambient guitar soundtrack.

Enjoy!

bill van loo & j. schnable – live at sync07

Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable – live at sync07 from chromedecay on Vimeo.

forest ave timelapse:

forest ave timelapse from chromedecay on Vimeo.

studio work in progress

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the studio lately on various project. I thought it would be good to post about a few of the things I’ve been working on.

First, I’m really pleased to show off a new video that I made, demonstrating a technique I use a lot in Ableton Live for programming melodic sounds in interesting ways. It’s my take on an MPC-style chopped-up kind of approach. Here’s the video:

Also, here are some pics of studio stuff going on:

QuartzComposer test: dual cameras
I’ve started playing around with QuartzComposer in anticipation of an upcoming Bill Van Loo & J. Schnable live set in mid-March, and this is a test shot from tonight’s session. Here I have input from two different video sources (a built-in iSight and an old Logitech webcam, powered by the macam driver) running into QC, going through a few color control choices, then being rendered out.

Canasta remix - Live screenshot
I’m working on a remix for the band Canasta out of Chicago. My good friend J. Schnable is playing piano for the band’s shows now, and he shot me a DVD full of stems from their song “slow down Chicago”. I’m rebuilding it in Live as a new remix.

Intel MacBook: setup and first impressions

As promised in my last post (“Goodbye old Powerbook, Hello Intel MacBook!“), here are some further thoughts about the transition to my new laptop.

First off, my new MacBook arrived much earlier than I expected. I paid for 2-3 day shipping, and it arrived in two days, even though the FedEx tracking page said it came from Shanghai, China. Nice! It was quite a pleasant surprise to be awakened by the doorbell, with a cheerful FedEx delivery guy waiting to hand me a box containing the MacBook.

As expected, taking the new laptop out of its box was a joy. As countless people have said, nobody beats Apple at the unboxing experience, and this new laptop was no exception. I love the molded styrofoam inserts that have the word “MacBook” engraved in them. Think about that statement for a second – I just expressed affection for a piece of styrofoam. Now that’s identity design, and stirring up passion from the audience!

MacBook - Styrofoam packaging

Once I got the new MacBook booted up and running, the next chore was starting to get all my data moved over, and all the programs I use installed. This was a pretty big task, since I had at least 20 different programs to install, and 25 GB of data to move over from various backups. On top of that, I decided that I’d finally consolidate my iPhoto library onto one machine instead of having it split across multiple CD and DVD backups – the new MacBook’s 120GB drive made that really easy. Many hours of importing photos later, I have about 5500 digital photos to sort out, label, and organize, but that’s 7 years worth of history – all 3 of my kids growing up, countless gigs, and all my more art-oriented photography. It’s going to be great to have it all in one place.

setting up the new MacBook

On to the software installation. There were really no big surprises here – I just kept plugging away at downloading the latest Universal Binary versions of the software I use from the Web, running installers, and so on. I don’t think I even had to restart more than once – the Cycling74 software SoundFlower required a reboot, but everything else just proceeded along smoothly.

MacBook setup, continued

Here’s a partial list of everything I installed at first:

  • Ableton Live 6.07 (my main music production tool these days
  • SoundHack (again, not Universal Binary, but still blazing fast on the Intel Mac
  • Reason 2.5 Adapted (an old version; trying to see if it’s worth keeping for the electric piano sounds
  • SonicBirth (a great audio programming environment – lets you create AudioUnits plugins, for free!
  • Thunderbird (my e-mail client of choice
  • QuartzComposer (from the Developer tools CD that came with the MacBook – a fantastic free visual programming environment
  • Last.fm (for social music listening/charting
  • Flickr Uploadr (the fastest way to upload images to Flickr from iPhoto
  • Photoshop Elements 3.0 (it’s going to be running under Rosetta, since it’s not Universal Binary, but still at least as fast as running it on the old 867MHz PowerBook!
  • ComicLife (a great, whimsical app. I’ll be using it for a class I teach this summer.
  • iSquint (for converting videos to iPod format
  • Handbrake (for ripping DVDs to the hard drive
  • Palm Desktop (for keeping track of my calendar
  • NeoOffice (the free Microsoft Office alternative – runs MUCH faster and smoother on this machine than on the old PowerBook!
  • Bitpim (trying it out to see if it works with my new Bluetooth-compatible phone
  • TextWrangler (for building Web sites
  • Firefox (for Web browsing
  • Fugu (my SCP/SFTP client of choice

So, that’s a lot of software! On top of that, I had to reorganize all my music files. On the Powerbook, I had my hard drive split into two partitions, one for my operating system, documents, and applications, and the other for music stuff. On this new computer, I decided not to mess with partitioning the drive, and just kept it as one big partion, so what had been an “Audio” partition now is an “AUDIO” folder in the root of my hard drive. I think it should work fine, but it does mean some tedious work in locating samples inside Ableton Live, and so on. Ah well.

As far as my music software goes, I’ve really only played with Ableton Live so far. Acting on a tip from J. Schnable, I downloaded the Bismark BS-1 SoundFont player, and the jRhodes3 SoundFont set, and it sounds great! I think I’ve found my new Rhodes electric piano sound, which is nice since that’s a core part of my signature sound.

Things I still have left: I realized today that I hadn’t gotten my e-mail backed up from the old laptop’s hard drive, so I had to order a new external hard drive enclosure that fits 2.5″ laptop drives, which I’ll put the old hard drive into and use to pull over all my old data. Everything else had made it onto the FireWire drive I used for backing it up, but somehow, I missed the e-mail. Ah well – at least I have it!

That’s about it for now – thanks for reading! If you read this and want to help me pay for the new laptop, order any CD from the chromedecay catalog and I’ll waive or refund the shipping charge.

cdigital010 released: rob theakston – grand traverse bay EP

I’m very pleased to announce a new release on chromedecay digital, the free download branch of chromedecay. For cdigital010, my longtime friend and collaborator Rob Theakston presents 4 new minimal electronic compositions, with 2 additional remixes by me (Bill Van Loo) and our Thinkbox compatriot Chris McNamara.

rob theakston: grand traverse bay EP cover image
rob theakston – grand traverse bay EP

The cover image for this release features a gorgeous photo by Ypsilanti’s Matt Callow, entitled “Voigtlander Pinhole: Grand Traverse Bay” (from which this release’s title was also drawn).

Bill Van Loo – spring 2007 update

I thought I’d take a few minutes here to give some updates about what’s going on with me and chromedecay.

First off, I’ve been taking guitar lessons the last couple months from a great guitarist, Jeff Vivrette (whose website I also happen to be building!). Jeff’s been a great teacher, and it’s been really amazing watching my skills improve. Thanks, Jeff! (You can also check out Jeff Vivrette on Myspace).

I’ve also been doing some production work lately, working with the incredibly talented Rebecca Anderson (who is working on putting together her first full-length solo record; check Rebecca Anderson on Myspace and ShoutLife) and a crazy rapper known at the The Professional Child. Check for some chromedecay hip-hop mashups in the near future.

In label news, chromedecay has been working on a few upcoming chromedecay digital releases. The first one is by Rob Theakston, and is a set of Rob’s minimal electronic work, featuring 4 of his tracks as well as remixes by me and Chris McNamara (of Thinkbox fame). After that will come a series of digital releases from J. Schnable, featuring cover art produced by our good friend Shawn Johnson. Catch a sneak peak at the cover art over on Shawn’s site, in.something.

The Rob Theakston release on chromedecay digital should be up in a week or two – check back for the full scoop! Hope you’re having a wonderful spring – the weather in Ypsilanti has been beautiful!