Electronola - An electronic gumbo of New Orleans music
An Electronic Music project in New Orleans, LA by Earl Scioneaux ·
-
Don't want to forget? Click the star to add this project to your profile.
Update #14: Video Episode 4 - Gridding drums
Posted on June 23, 2009
This video is a look at the technical side of some of the stuff I'm doing. I'm not sure how much interest there is in this kind of thing, so please feel free to leave comments so I can determine how much (or how little) of this kind of stuff to include in the future.
Enjoy!
ps - I had to postpone the session with Shannon Powell a tad. He'll be going on the road with Dr. John for a little over a week, so hopefully I can get him in shortly after that.
114
Backers
$4,100
pledged of $4,000 goal
0
seconds to go
Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on June 5, 2009.
Pledge $1 or more
12 Backers
Get access to the behind-the-scenes video & audio updates that will document the creation of this album. This will include video clips of recording sessions, audio clips of tunes as they progress, and more!
Pledge $15 or more
53 Backers
Get the behind-the-scenes updates AND an exclusive early download of the record as soon as it's done (~1 month before it's out on CDs, iTunes, etc.)
Pledge $35 or more
20 Backers
SOLD OUT
(0 of 20 remaining)
Get everything above, and I'll give you a lesson in audio production/engineering, arranging, or music theory.
Pledge $50 or more
10 Backers
SOLD OUT
(0 of 10 remaining)
Get all the above stuff, and I'll invite you over for my home cooked gumbo (old family recipe).
Pledge $100 or more
8 Backers
•
Limited Reward
(2 of 10 remaining)
Get all of the above, and I'll include a sample of your voice on the record.
Project By
Has not connected their Facebook account.
I sculpt data that scrambles electrons that excite magnets that move speakers that ripple the air that tickles your eardrum that tantalizes your brain that shakes your bum. Simply put, I'm a music producer and recording engineer. I do a lot of work with some of New Orleans' favorite acts, including Preservation Hall & the New Orleans Bingo! show.
Among the more famous artists I've recorded are Tom Waits, Pete Seeger, Del McCoury, Lenny Kravitz, Jim James, Paolo Nutini, Mos Def, and Buddy Miller. I've also done independent recordings for local greats like Shannon Powell, Tom McDermott, Luke Winslow-King, Meschiya Lake, & Kristin Diable.
In addition to my studio engineering, I produce and perform electronic music as The Madd Wikkid, and have been known to play piano/keyboards around New Orleans and Japan. I also sometimes tour as a live sound engineer.
Good question, Alex.
It is indeed possible to create a grid of the drummer's fluctuations and have the computer follow that, and it would be another way the goal I specified - having the machine generated music lock in tightly with the live drumming. There are 3 main reasons I choose to do it this:
1. I'm going to have multiple live players on this. They can't each have their own custom grid, and playing to someone else's tempo fluctuations after the fact can sometimes prove difficult. When performing live, musicians constantly re-calibrate to one another's playing and the fluctuations are kind of reached by collective, um... "agreement". When playing along with recorded material, it's a very different story.
2. Mapping the grid to the drummer makes one thing easier - it's great so long as all I want to do is lock MIDI to the audio of the drummer. However, it does me no good if I want to edit and shuffle around audio. For example, perhaps I like what the drummer played in measure 45 and I want to replace measure 39 with that material. If I've mapped the tempo grid to his fluctuations, then one of those measures might be shorter than the other, and making such an edit would open a can of worms. Doing the way that I've chosen, I know that each measure is equal length, so I can shuffle things around with ease.
3. Least important, but still somewhat of a concern, is that for music locked to a grid is a kazillion times more DJ friendly than music that isn't. Gridding makes it much more practical for a DJ to be able to beat match this to other tunes to mix in and out of.
Ack! I seem to have dropped a few words in that above comment. New rule for myself - no more posts before I'm completely awake.
I agree with your issue with time-stretching, but have you checked out Zplane's Elastique Pro? Ableton Live 8 is using the "Pro" algorithm, which makes a big difference, imo... Torq uses it now as well, which allows for some pretty neat mixing options that I normally would have passed on with earlier time-stretching functionality in various forms (in Final Scratch, on Pioneer CDJs, etc)