The Radioactive Orchestra

With 2011 wrapping up, this year's best-of lists are starting to make the rounds. In terms of creating a fun and stimulating sound experience, the Radioactive Orchestra from this summer is one of the year's interactive sonic highlights.

Give people something fun to do, and they might stay to play, create and share. The Radioactive Orchestra, an interactive sound project created by a Swedish nuclear safety team in collaboration with composer Axel Boman and musician Kristofer Hagbard, demonstrates the fun and the potential power of utilizing sound and music for active engagement. I love the way this project creatively uses sound to demonstrate the relatively heady concept of radioactive decay, inviting site visitors to create their own music based on the unique decay patterns of isotopes. This project is primarily education and awareness focused (awareness of the concept, not necessarily the KSU brand), but imagine the potential for active sonic engagement with commercial brands and products. This year's Google Les Paul doodle comes to mind as a successful example in this vein.

If this were a brand with an existing sonic identity, reigning in the options and offering a curated palette of sounds and options could reinforce or help build that identity. Also, I would have loved to see the option of a simplified design for a broad target in order to quickly get non-musicians creating and sharing. The interface is fairly advanced and you’d have to know a bit about music to really have fun. Perhaps taking a cue from the Google Les Paul doodle and simplifying the interface and sharing functionality would make for a friendlier experience and a broader appeal.

I’m still impressed. Check it out and start playing by choosing isotopes from the blue cloud.

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Music for a Rainy Morning

Fog. Rain. Trench coats. Raw deals. Dredging the river for evidence of the crime... Well, maybe not that dark. But, there's definitely a noir-ish feel to this one that resonates with me.

Now that the touring and live shows have slowed down, I'm getting taste for loud electric guitars again (it never really goes away). I put this one down on a recent rainy morning.

Paper Lamps

I've been busy lately with the demands of the advertising world, recording sessions and non-electronic music, but I've been working on a few bits and pieces in the spare moments. I've been enjoying pushing the envelope with the gnarly side of FM synthesis and cross modulation, finding the nasty sounds with instruments traditionally associated with the slick, bell-like tones ubiquitous in the pop and soundtrack music of the 1980's. It's more fun when you find something a little scary and try to make it into something beautiful than when you start with a well-groomed and presentable palette.

For some reason, I see glowing paper lamps when I hear this number. Don't ask me why...I have no idea.

Color Field

I had a conversation recently about synesthesia as it relates to music. Synesthesia, according to Wikipedia, is "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." People who experience synesthesia with music often associate or "see" certain colors with certain sounds, pitches or keys.

I imagine that, at some level, people associate stimulation of one sense with another. I'm not certain where this comes from--could it be from associations we make from our everyday experiences? For example, parsley always smells green to me, but is that because I know that parsley is the color green and my mind creates an association? Does this happen for you? Do just-baked chocolate chip cookies smell light brown to you?

I'm not sure if I am officially a synesthete, but I have always associated musical textures with hues of color and shapes, and this is part of the language I use when working with other musicians to describe ideas or direction. When I make ambient soundscapes, working with pure sound and texture is the main focus. Light and shade, bright and dark, hot and cold, sharp and dull.

For this piece, I wanted to play up the rich, glowing hues and saturation I love in the work of Mark Rothko. I deliberately dialed back the detail and played on the "colors" of the tones and, particularly, how the frequencies blended and created new colors when stacked together. I hope you enjoy.

Gettin' Ready for the Kumite - A Tribute to the Martial Arts Training Montage

Is it just me, or they're always showing that Jean-Claude Van Damme movie "Bloodsport" on the dark depths of nighttime basic cable? Like so many martial arts movies, it's heavy on the flashbacks, especially the training montage where the lead actor overcomes intense pain and rigor at the hands of a stern martial arts master living alone in the country to ultimately become a badass (well, actually, in "Bloodsport," the master is a family man who takes the troubled young Van Damme in as his son--also a common theme).

Also, like so many fine action movie soundtracks from the 1980's, there's some pulsing suspense to build tension and some faux-Asian synth stylings to make sure you know it's Eastern tension. Here is my tribute to the training montage of the 1980's. As it builds, see the pieces of a young, troubled man's training come together to meet some long sought goal...
becoming a badass.

Pure Analog Syrup - A Remix

I rode my bike this morning and the trails were beautiful. The weather has been cooling down and I'm noticing that some of leaves are just starting to change. I wrote Green Relief at the start of this year when winter was starting and I was itching for the warm Spring weather to come. Thinking about the weather swinging the other direction and the amount of precious daylight getting smaller and smaller, I listened back to it for the sake of nostalgia and I wanted to make a few changes. I took out the percussion and the piano, opting for smooth, purely electronic sounds to play up the element of "rich analog syrup" that I love in the older synths. Hope you enjoy the subtle changes.

Meteor Shower

Nature puts on the best shows, sometimes. A few weeks ago, there was a late night meteor shower visible from my house. I was working late in the studio and recorded this ambient environment with the mysteries of space in my thoughts. I'd recommend headphones to get the full benefit of floating in an extraterrestrial vacuum.