End of the World tracklist

I love intentionality, and personal preference aside, I dig when things are chosen for a reason.

For the series How to Survive the End of the World we choose songs for the counters in the theme of “apocalypse” or “the world is ending.” Some weeks there was more than one track used, but to cover our bases:

Megadeth – “Symphony of Destruction”
Nine Inch Nails – “The Day the World Went Away”
U2 – “Until the End of the World”
Zager and Evans – “In the Year 2525″
The Rolling Stones – “Paint it black”
R.E.M. – “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”
U2 (feat. Johnny Cash) – “The Wanderer”

monome + guitar

Be sure to jump into it a bit, around 4:00 / 5:00 mark.

Agile Partners – Star6

Nice set of free loops. They appear to be intended for the Star6 app, but are WAV files that are accessible by just about everything. Agile Partners – Star6 – Free Audio.

DIY Papercraft Roland TR-909

Build your very own papercraft Roland TR-909.

Nudge, an online electronic instrument

What a fun idea. Nudge, an online tone-matrix style sequencer. It’s worth at least 15 minutes of your time to create some digital music. And you don’t even have to leave the avclub to try it out since they so kindly let you embed it right here.

small mograph

Not every motion graphic piece we do is a large scale, massive piece. Sometimes they’re small. A little tag here, a small photography composition there. A little color grading, a little clean up work, building a quick motion loop element. I enjoy these “small mograph” pieces. They break the flow, allow for you to start and complete the project within an hour or two, and add a little functional gloss to part of the service.

Here is an example of such a piece. We welcomed Todd Fields to lead worship this weekend at NewSpring’s Anderson campus. Just so people knew who he was and to not take away from the energy that begins the service I built this little 10 sec tag that ran directly after the service counter during the intro of the first song. Simple, effective.

Todd Fields open from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

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Acidlab

Acidlab.de, maker of 303 and 808 (among others) clones. Check out the demo.

monome track, untitled

A little monome fun over the weekend. I should probably rerecord this track; it’s a bit sloppy getting started and falls apart in the end. On the other hand, I was holding the iPhone with one hand so there’s that. Samples are all original, composed in Reason. Running the mlrV app for playback (it’s pictured in the video).

Royksopp remix contest

Feeling creative, musically speaking? Love Royksopp? Never hear of Royksopp? Either way, grab their track ‘Tricky tricky’ and join in on the remix fun.

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Casio VL_Tone

I recorded this track last night with Propellerhead’s Record. I love that I can easily track real world instruments into the Propellerhead’s environment then utilized the Reason effects chains and automation to make things much more interesting. In this track there are a few Reason drum sequencers, one Subtractor, and a Thor providing some pad and shimmer toward the end. The other synth tracks are created from a simple Casio VL_Tone keyboard from 1980. In addition, the glitchy beats are built with the Hexatone app on the iPhone and captured live. Finally, a smattering of old movie clips give some added context, and are just plain fun.

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The screenshot below really doesn’t tell you all that much except that Propellerhead Record is beautiful.

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Typography sequencing

I see what they’re doing over at Meek.FM and I dig it.

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Nuclear O’Reilly Music Production

And here it is. Nuclear O’Reilly Music Production has produced the first (their assumption, which is probably correct) album fully composed on the iPhone. They utilized Intua’s Beatmaker to create these, honestly, rather entertaining tracks. I gave it a listen the other day while I worked and was rather impressed.

The Art Of Video Scratching

The Art Of Video Scratching, interesting idea.

Tone matrix

So, wondering what a tone matrix is? No, never heard of one? Well take a look at this.

iPhone music

Say what you want, I still see it coming. As the iPhone gets (1) more prevalent in the hands of nearly everyone and (2) increases in ability it will increasing become a compositional space for musicians, electronic musicians in particular. I mentioned it back in November just for the record. Stylistically I’m not a huge fan of this piece right here. However I love where this technology is going and I appreciate what is possible.

Mixxx, free open source DJ software

I’m always up for trying something new related to open source, music. If that’s you, too, maybe you should give Mixxx a try.

Slice beat juggling app

Coming soon for iPhone and iPod Touch is Slice, a circular, WAV chopping, Monome-MLR-style app for real time slicing and chopping of beats. It certainly looks interesting.

ro + 256 + milkcrates + monks

Another nice monome performed piece. It especially like the first 2 minutes or so. Amazing what variety you can achieve with just a few samples and well placed slicing.

Amon Tobin, visually wonderful

I love this pieces, especially when it gets drum and bass heavy about halfway through. Nicely treated 3D elements that fit into the environment tightly.

Visual Music – Amon Tobin music video from 12FRAMES on Vimeo.

Moby interview

From last week’s Moby post Adam’s comment lead me to this CNN video interview with Moby. Yep, love him even more.