Sufi Plugins and a mix without them

Months ago I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to play around and write some presets for DJ/ Rupture’s Sufi Plug-ins for Ableton Live. One of the things that initially attracted me to Ableton Live was it’s nearly limitless customization options. The addition of Max-4-Live allowing users to literally build their own plugins from the ground up only expands the possibilities. I jumped at the chance to help contribute to Rupture’s own set of plugins as the open source nature of the project and thinking behind it is extremely interesting to me.

The synths in Sufi-Plugins were all written with north African and Middle Eastern (Morrocan specifically), scales and quarter-tones in mind. For the non-musicians, quarter-tones are the musical notes that exist in between the white and black keys on the piano. Very uncommon in western music, once you start to include quarter-tones the scales and chord possibilities increase drastically and you can start doing some pretty weird (and fun) stuff.

Sufi Plugins and a folder containing presets are available for free to all M4L users HERE

In semi-related news, I’ve put together a live mix (using Ableton Live) that includes a good ammout of music from DJ Rupture’s record label Dutty Artz. Existing in my small bedroom in Queens has forced me to leave the turntables in Cleveland. Getting my APC40 customized to a point where I can play back tracks and also improvise for extended amounts of time is a process that has taken up a lot of my time over the past year. In this mix Im playing back a lot of good tunes, but I’m also starting to experiment with making things on the fly, adding percussion and synth elements, skipping around within songs in real time, etc.. Im excited to see how I’ll be able to incorporate Sufi-Plugins into my own live setup.

Check Dutty Artz, Night Slugs and Fade to Mind for more.

10101010110

Bleep bloop bleep bloop wahhhhh

Posting Something

Great concept video directed by Us. Simple concept. CG Vinyl. Really wish I thought of it.

Some cool announcements coming soon!

Fusion

I can’t remember how I first came across the work of Mary Huang, but I’ve had her page bookmarked for more than a year. Fashion is not something I dont normally write about, and if you were to meet me in person it would be obvious why. Mary doesn’t stick to a single medium in her work. I initially became interested in her “Typeface” project as a design concept, but the application of it in a facial perception sense was what really intrigued me.

Check her site here, her work goes deeper still.

 

An Incredibly Irresponsible Grammy Post

We here at natecho.com (me) love music, and with the Grammy awards right around the corner, I thought I would take  look at some of the lesser known categories. As you may or may not know, more than half of the Grammy awards aren’t even televised. Sure, Rhianna and Kanye and Maroon 5 and Adele are up for Record of the Year, but who gives a shit? We’ve seen and heard all of them in heavy rotation (bars, clubs, Wal-Mart, Barbershop, radio, sporting events, itunes, MTV, itunes, television, your friends itunes). Do I really need to see Rhianna’s acceptance speech thanking her 14 million Twitter followers? So without further delay, my incredibly misinformed Gammy picks for 2011.

-First, in the interest of humor, I just want to say that if Los Tigres Del Norte doesn’t win “Best Banda or Notreno Album” I’m going to bomb L.A.. Nah, but this is the category that got me thinking about writing this post. I’m not the most worldly person, but I like to think I can tell the difference between a Salsa and a Cumbia. Banda/Notreno is a genre that I’ve never heard of, but after seeing the word “accordian” in the wikipedia entry, it brought me to the conclusion that it’s okay in my book.

-It’s noteworthy that about 30 categories have been cut this year, including anything having to do with Hard Rock or Metal. Fucked

-”Best Regional Roots Album” Has got to be the most asinine award category I’ve ever seen. How the hell is any panel of people ging to say that “Rebirth of New Orleans” brought to us by the Rebirth Brass Band, deserves an award over George Kahumoku’s “Wao Akua-Forest of the Gods” I’m sorry if you came here for mp3 links, I have none. But you don’t need an mp3 to tell you that New Orleans Jazz and Traditional Japanese music really shouldn’t be in the same category.

-Looks like Ziggy and Stephen Marley are up for (separate) best Reggae Albums. There’s some other artists there but they aren’t Marley’s so why the hell would they win a Reggae award in LA?

-”Best World Music” Contains 1 out of 4 nominees that might not be African. Apparently Africa is the only continent that hasn’t figured out Dubstep

-Speaking of Dubstep. Skrillex is up for 5 Grammys. I’ll let you Google that one.

-The ammount of Gospel and Christian Music categories could probably be it’s own award show.

Once we get to the real down and dirty categories (Best Sound Engineer, Best Compilation, Best Jazz Improv Solo, Best Classical Producer), I could sit back and listen to absolutely everything straight through. Pro-tip, check the “Producer of the Year” category; without these people Adele would still be sitting in her shitty chev apartment eating ice cream before an open mic night.  Grammys are a popularity and profit contest. It’s shame that Rhianna gets “Album of the Year” when we have 10 categories dedicated to classical music, people who have put far more time into learning their craft than Rhianna spent in pole-dancing class. And for some god-unforeseen reason Tina Fey is up for best “Spoken Word Album” against Willam Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I’ll leave it at that.

Enjoy the Grammys. I’ll be at an underground rock show.

Local Love across Statelines

As I split my resident status between states and nations, I make a conscious effort to keep an ear out for local music no matter where I am. Perhaps “local” isnt the right word for what I m thinking of though. A more correct statement would go something like this; “No matter where I am, I’m always looking for music that isn’t mainstream and has no reason not to be.”  These artists deserve a few shouts to their talent and creativity, many times over. Also, we’re gonig all hip-hop on this one.

Dirty Jones is out of EC, Down the Way, Cleveland Heights, doesn’t matter, everyone that side of town knows him. The only thing matching his intimidating physical presence is his equally intense, cant-take-your-eye-off-him stage show. Lyrics range from feelgood (see below), to horror theatrics, to downright lunacy. This track is off the mans second EP, Fat Ugly and Arrogant downloadable here.

Late 2011 saw quite a few projects drop from artists all over the Cleveland Hip Hop game. We saw MGK take up ranks with Bad Boy, and Smoke Screen continues to expand (but that’s another post). The homies KEYEL dropped a massive EP as well. Not sure the producer specifics but I’m sure Eso, PS (peace, fuckerss) and Holy are all accounted for.  These tracks are all solid, and Keyel isn’t trying to be anything they arent. Straight up good hiphop. Stack comes out on top for me. downloadable even

Finally, as my new digs in NY are well lived-in at this point, I could now consider a number rap heavyweights as “locals” no matter how you want to define the word. But what’s the fun in posting a Jay song or some biggie remix that has been done to death. Fuck that, Flatbush, Kris Kassanova. Real as it gets. Local heat in the half-assed winter. Shout to DuttyArtz

Although I haven’t been to Miami in years, I’m still gonna drop a Chize track in here. This found it’s way into my soundcloud favorites awhile ago. I keep telling myself that one day I’m gonna do a huge post on all of my soundcloud favs but I seem to have fallen into a hole too deep for my own good. Chize’s sample selection on this is interesting for sure. This could very well be the original song with just a beat playing underneath, but judging from is other work I’m gonna guess he did a lot more than that. The mans soundcloud page is full of great stuff like this, lots of it downloadable. Keep your eye on Chize, he’ll be raking it in soon.

Flashes and Blood

I’m just finishing up some vfx work on a new film called “Tied Up” written by Brady Kirchberg here in New York. Still in post production at the moment (renders and uploads as I type this), I was lucky to get involved in the project, and I’m very fortunate that the people I’ve been working with truly ‘get it’ in a production sense. I was immediately impressed with the footage and overall dark look atmosphere of the film. I believe it was shot on a Sony F3, and as I re-edit this post, I’m going to add the trailer below just you can have a look and appreciate dynamic range, cinematography, composition and all that film-geek stuff. Strong story and strong characters are also worth mentioning; During the last 10 minutes or so nearly everything you thought you knew is kicked out from under you. Twists on twists and you can’t help but smile to yourself through all the betrayal, alliances, backstabs and cahoots. Keep checking back and I’ll look at maybe putting together some simple vfx breakdowns. Although December is going to be a busy month for me.

 

Trailer here:

 

 

Behind-the-Scenes super squished aspect ratio

Premiering on Dec 9th

Helen Mills Theater

139 West 26th Street

New York, NY

tickets@ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/213150

Keep an eye on the fests too. It’ll be around

Lightplay

Although this technology is still fairly new, I feel like I’m a bit behind in discovering it for myself. That being said, I’m going to pass along the knowledge anyway. Light field photography, in it’s new consumer form, is something that seems like mere novelty at this point. A cool gadget that those of us with a lot of money will sooner or later be waving around in the clubs and among friends to show off more than actually needing it for the practical purposes of taking a picture.

But I have a hard time believing that literally refocusing your image after the picture is taken is the limit of this technology. It’s a great trick to show off on the floor of a trade show, and like I said, I got almost giddy when I saw how it worked. But now, a week or so later, the novelty has worn off and I’m finding myself wondering what else could be done with it? Years of development, I’m sure millions of dollars have been spent, and for what? A weird blue box for consumers to point and shoot? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry, we have to start somewhere. But let’s get our creative brains moving. Video applications? Feature films where individual audience members can choose to focus on whatever they want in the scene? How would something like this effect the story telling process? Digital photography exhibits incorporating an interactive element for patrons? Signs that say “please touch the art”? 360 degree panorama rooms that immerse the viewer in an environment  where he/she can choose to look at things however they want? How could it work when combined with stereoscopic 3D?

It’s exciting to see a development that fundamentally changes how cameras work, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface. Where do we go from here? Exciting indeed.

2011 Show Reel

New Show Reel is finally done!

Look at this guys hands (look at them)

great idea, simple too. but still not easy. my hats off to the people who made it