…to all our (Indian) friends and friends of India around the globe,
to the international community of listeners and music lovers,
to all the great vocal / instrumental musicians, composers and DJs,
to the passionate event organizers, booking agencies and music labels,
to analytical music scientists, profound teachers & pedagogues
and to our colleagues from press & medias
a very HAPPY & SUCCESSFULLY NEW YEAR 2013 !!!!!

This isn’t like any Hurdy-Gurdy you’ve seen or heard before.

Derek Holzer’s optoelectronic Tonewheels Hurdy-Gurdy is a combination of mechanical, optical, and electronic elements, part sculpture and part instrument. It recalls vintage mechanical and optical instruments, but with a sound that is decidedly modern and strange.

In the translation, something wonderful happens: this becomes a serious punk instrument, producing surprising, hard-edged sounds. The wheels turn, and the gizmo rocks.

Combining disciplines in this sort of design also means merging different skill sets, so it’s telling that input for the instrument has come from other artists, including friend-of-the-site circuit designer Eric Archer, who has been involved in our Handmade Music series (now MusicMakers). Coming full circle (ahem), I’m thrilled that Mr. Holzer will be organizing MusicMakers at CTM here in Berlin. We have a call out now to participate in the hacklab for that event; I’ll share more details on that event here in the coming days.

I’m a great fan of Derek’s work; there’s plenty to explore below and I hope we cover more soon.

TONEWHEELS HURDY-GURDY(VIELLE A ROUE OPTOÉLECTRONIQUE) from macumbista on Vimeo.

This optoelectronic hurdy-gurdy was commission by the Acces(s) Festival, Pau France in October 2012.
TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions, such as the Light-Tone Organ (Edwin Emil Welte, 1936 Germany), the ANS Synthesizer (Evgeny Murzin, 1958 USSR), and the Oramics system (Daphne Oram, 1959 UK). Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry similar to that used in 16 & 35mm motion picture projectors to produce sound.
The TONEWHEELS Hurdy-Gurdy presented at Acces(s) is not an “interactive” artwork in the common sense. While it does not reward the impatient museum visitor with flashing lights and noises at the simple touch of the button, it does invite participation in the process of technological music creation. Although it first appears to be a very traditional instrument known to many folk-music cultures, it functions in a very different way which can only be discovered by playing it.
The artist would like to thank Tobias Traub of Oroborus Customs e.K. and Carlo Crovato for their invaluable assistance in creating this instrument. Circuits designed by Jessica Rylan and Eric Archer are also used within the system.
More information on this project can be found at macumbista.net/?p=3020

This is just one piece out of the Tonewheels project, all working with this medium of physical, optical discs. Here’s a beautiful video from another iteration:

cuT 30[draft]-TONEWHEELS filmed by Eyes_For_Ears from macumbista on Vimeo.

The over-arching project has its own page:
http://umatic.nl/tonewheels.html

The Hurdy-Gurdy is described on Derek’s blog:
http://macumbista.net/?p=3020

And lots of other projects, including his new Solstice Soundboxes, are detailed there, as well:
http://macumbista.net/

Hope some of you get to see Derek and me in person in Berlin next month, and for everyone else, we’ll see you on the Internet.

All photos courtesy the artist.

Nonstop from Iceland, the perfect soundtracks to your winter. Photo (CC-BY) James Cridland.

It’s easy to be bleak about new music releases, the vast quantities of new work spreading before you in their sameness like a blizzard – plenty of particles, but all a white wash. When feelings like that hit you – or the depressed mood that might strike during midwinter in the far reaches of the Northern Hemisphere – there’s a solution. You can warm yourself with good friends in intimate surroundings.

And that’s what Iceland’s Bedroom Community collective and label are all about. This group has literally assembled a group of close friends for “intimate” musical connections. Getting in on their releases feels accordingly like gathering with that circle, in beautiful, reflective, finely-crafted music that’s unafraid of drawing lines between electronic music, classical, and experimental traditions. And yes, that includes looking to acoustic instrumentation and concert music alongside digital and purely electronic media. The founders were originally Valgeir Sigurðsson, with Nico Muhly and Ben Frost, with a few additions since then.

December is the perfect time to catch up if you like what you here, as an exquisite new Yule mix is free with other records. Let’s listen to a few samples.

Have a Yule that’s cool. Sadly, no sweater is available. (Box set, please?)

This year, a new Yule compilation is an exclusive in December, complete with make-your-own gift CD kits. Yes, I’m a bit late for Christmas, but I’m ready to keep gift giving going. New Year’s. Orthodox Christmas. My birthday. All ahead in the next three weeks. Track listing:

00:00 Daníel Bjarnason – “Enn fagnar heimur” / Scanner Remix
04:50 Nico Muhly feat. Dawn Landes – “The Brown Girl” / Valgeir Sigurðsson Remix
10:57 Paul Corley – “Sidings”
16:38 Puzzle Muteson – “True Faith”
19:59 Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason – Theme From “Djúpið”
23:33 Nadia Sirota – “Twelve Days Of Christmas”
28:49 Sam Amidon – “The Sad Gnome” + “Prodigal Son 2007 Demo”
34:48 Ben Frost – “Bergþórugata 2006″
37:12 Nico Muhly – “Radio Bells”
41:28 Daníel Bjarnason – “Enn fagnar heimur”
43:48 Valgeir Sigurðsson – “Gleðilegt jóðl”

Yule is in the Air

From last year’s Yule mix, Sam Amidon with How Come That Blood (FM Belfast Remix) video, as featured on NME (PS, funny to run across Sam’s name, as I met Sam years ago in New York):

Another great sample is Daníel Bjarnason’s “Montauk in February Remix” off Spindrift:

But Yule aside, now’s as good a time as any to mention some wonderful recent Bedroom Community releases, each of which deserve our consideration as we look back over 2012.

There’s Nico Muhly’s “Drones”, the latest from this brilliant, boundary-pushing composer. Ignore the title: this is post-minimal virtuosity, sometimes rollicking in nods to the likes of Rzewski, sometimes static sculpture, sometimes rock-and-roll. It’s, vitally, never timid:

Paul Corley’s debut “Disquiet” is a masterpiece, sparse and unadorned without ever being austere, a chillingly-beautiful set of instrumental meditations:

Finally, “Architecture of Loss” by Valgeir Sigurðsson is an exquisite, often programmatic work in instrumental and digital processes. Built on a ballet, the sense of movement and gesture is intact even in its sparest moments.

Bedroom Community remains a label to track, so I’ll continue to do so. Enjoy:

http://www.bedroomcommunity.net/

Vienna in the snow, ca. 2008. Happy winter, Austria – this EP is a fitting soundtrack. Photo (CC-BY-SA) gego2605.

Call it experimental electro, ambient house… whatever the genre, Parque is smart, chilled-out music from Vienna. Full of cinematic cross-cuts and sharply-contrasted sound design, the EP “Amerika” is bathed in pleasantly-mellow melancholy. It’s only a debut, but an impressive one. The love and time put into production shines through. We’re pleased to introduce CDM reader Bene, aka Parque, to the site and listeners.

And the Bavarian-born, Vienna-based Bene has a nice benefit in mind as he makes his holiday-timed release:

All incoming proceeds until end of this year (minus Bandcamp and PayPal fees) will be forwarded to a Viennese homeless shelter called „Die Gruft“. They give bedrolls to them and have a kitchen where the homeless always get some warm food and tea.

Have a listen:

More on the charity (German-only):
http://www.gruft.at/

This holiday, take a holiday to another world, chip music style. An imagined NES dimension, here envisioned (CC-BY-SA) torley.

Whether you’re unwrapping presents or not, we’re spending these twenty four hours unwrapping some beautiful musical gifts: have a Yule that’s cool with fine, free/donationware releases. First in the queue…

If unimaginative holiday music on endless repeat has given you the winter blues, the fine folks of Toy Company have the cure. The Montreal-based collective and 8-bit/lo-fi techno party series have brought together a number of friends with original tunes and noise and digital-fuzz-laden covers of tunes like “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night.” Meticulously-rendered, quirky music is free to hear, or thank the artists by naming your own price as this crew works to bring more live music to town. The compilation is called “12​-​24​-​12,” and it’s a great introduction to the crew – out of this sampler, you’re likely to find some artist you appreciate.

A lot of these tracks are Creative Commons-licensed, as well. If that’s not enough chips for your mid-winter desert, see also their lovely compilation from last year:
Toy Company – PLAYROOM Vol​.​1

Not everything is retro-tinged lo-fidelity NES far. You might have noticed Dj CUTMAN’s work is decidedly not 8-bit. That project is, to my knowledge, the first to take on Nintendo’s brand new WiiU console. While these machines will find their way as pure entertainment devices under Christmas trees this year, there’s some comfort in knowing musicians continue to turn commodity gaming hardware into compositional platforms, appropriated musical instruments. Have a listen to that release:

For my part, I’m saving “12​-​24​-​12″ as a jetlag tonic as I hop over the Atlantic later this week; I hope you enjoy it in your neck of the woods.

Pinball Pianola from Lucas Abela on Vimeo.

The mechanical and kinetic collide – literally – with the sonic, in a devilishly-inventive hybrid instrument that cross-breeds a pinball table with a piano. Australian artist Lucas Abela is joining us next month as part of CTM Festival: The Golden Age. In the meantime, he shares this work.

I’ve devised a Frankenstein experiment, combining the greatest musical invention of all time, the Piano; with the coolest amusement machines ever conceived; Pinball, to create an interactive sound installation like no other; ‘Pinball Pianola’, a musical device constructed by replacing the keyboard, hammers and front paneling of an upright piano, with a pinball cabinet butted up perpendicular against its exposed strings. Embracing high and low culture this instrument allows virtuosos and wizards alike to pit their skills in a game where musical compositions are created as metallic balls jettisoned into the game clash with the pianos resonating wires. This experiment the first of in a series of individually crafted instruments I’m constructing at Artspace as part of my Australia Council music board project fellowship that introduce musical elements into the iconic game of pinball, making sound generation – not scoring – the games’ main objective.

As a pianist, I might actually hate the idea were the sounds of the resonating strings not so compelling. I hope we get to see more. Bio:

Initially classed as a turntablist, Lucas Abela’s work has rarely resembled anything in the field, early feats saw him stabb vinyl with Kruger style stylus gloves, bound on electro acoustic trampolines, drag race the pope across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, perform deaf defying duet duels with amplified samurai swords, hospitalised by high powered turntables constructed from sewing machine motors, record chance John Peel sessions with the Flaming Lips, become Otomo Yoshihides’ favourite entry into his Ground Zero remix competition; ‘Consummation’ (even though instead of sampling the CD he destroyed it using amplified skewers!).

Today these turntable roots have became almost unrecognisable, evolving into his infamous glass instrument, the shards being nothing more than a giant diamond tipped stylus you vibrate with your mouth. He has been perfecting the instrument since it’s invention in 2003, perfroming internationally as Justice Yeldham and with his glass/ drums/ piano trio, Rice Corpse.

Lucas has principally been a live audio artist, perfroming live since 1994 after Oren Ambarchi stumbled across his radio performances, and invited him to play the What is? Music Festival. However Recently he has begun dabbling in sound installation with works like Vinyl Rally, where remote control cars with styli attached are raced over a track made from a mass of disused vinyl records.

He also founded of the irreverent dualpLOVER organisation, promoting, touring and releasing stark music from Australia and Abroad.

More:
dualplover.com

I can see exactly how this goes. Me. A Korg Poly800. One MIDI cable. A quiet moment in the studio. A completely ridiculous mis-interpretation of Mayan history that some have decided is the end of the world.

Let me just light some candles to set the mood.

“Hey there, Korg. So… this could be our last night on Earth.

I know this is my friend’s studio. But — who knows if the sun is going to come up tomorrow. Let me just find out where you’re connected in the patch bay.”

Actually, let me just stop there before I get carried away. This is a family site.

Yes, our friend AfroDJMac has come up with the perfect Ableton Live pack for the apocalypse, in collaboration with Mike Longo. It’s accompanied by an apocalypse EP, made entirely with the sounds in the collection. Description:

Get ready for the end! Announcing The Armageddon Pack, a large collection of Ableton Live Instruments for the Apocalypse! It’s comprised of multi-sampled instruments created with samples from the Korg Poly800 MKII analog synthesizer. These sounds are perfect for the post-apocalyptic world. It will be officially released on 12.21.12 at 12:21pm, but can currently be preordered for the reduced price of $12.21. The preorder includes an exclusive free instrument called “The Chosen One” to help you get ready for the end!

http://afrodjmac.com/2012/12/19/ableton-live-armageddon-pack/

And whether you want to go apocalyptic with Live or not, some music to hear:

AfroDJMac says that the Korg here was programmed to its “most apocalyptic sounds.” And so that raises a really crucial question: which synth would you want in an apocalypse? (MeeBlip for me, but for sentimental reasons.)

I can see exactly how this goes. Me. A Korg Poly800. One MIDI cable. A quiet moment in the studio. A completely ridiculous mis-interpretation of Mayan history that some have decided is the end of the world.

Let me just light some candles to set the mood.

“Hey there, Korg. So… this could be our last night on Earth.

I know this is my friend’s studio. But — who knows if the sun is going to come up tomorrow. Let me just find out where you’re connected in the patch bay.”

Actually, let me just stop there before I get carried away. This is a family site.

Yes, our friend AfroDJMac has come up with the perfect Ableton Live pack for the apocalypse, in collaboration with Mike Longo. It’s accompanied by an apocalypse EP, made entirely with the sounds in the collection. Description:

Get ready for the end! Announcing The Armageddon Pack, a large collection of Ableton Live Instruments for the Apocalypse! It’s comprised of multi-sampled instruments created with samples from the Korg Poly800 MKII analog synthesizer. These sounds are perfect for the post-apocalyptic world. It will be officially released on 12.21.12 at 12:21pm, but can currently be preordered for the reduced price of $12.21. The preorder includes an exclusive free instrument called “The Chosen One” to help you get ready for the end!

http://afrodjmac.com/2012/12/19/ableton-live-armageddon-pack/

And whether you want to go apocalyptic with Live or not, some music to hear:

AfroDJMac says that the Korg here was programmed to its “most apocalyptic sounds.” And so that raises a really crucial question: which synth would you want in an apocalypse? (MeeBlip for me, but for sentimental reasons.)

Artist Decktonic, aka Christian Montoya, hovers over his sound machines, as neon-fantastic as his music sounds. Photo courtesy the artist; (CC-BY-NC) Ben Mason.

A generation of gaming has done something to our ears. It has primed listeners to appreciate the sound of digital instruments in raw form: dry and immediate, crisply-synchronized machine dance music. So, while I wouldn’t call the music of Decktonic “chip music” or “game music,” somehow it’s a modern take on each. It’s retro-futuristic, electro-techno unadorned with effects. And, hell, while Korg’s DS-10 running on Nintendo DS is far from a high-fidelity sound experience, there’s something irresistibly funky about its sound. Listening to the DS-10 dry in the hands of a creative musician can be a cure for the ear fatigue you suffer from the endless sameness of a lot of releases.

“Forgotten Machines” is a free download (available lossless), Creative Commons-licensed if you want to do your own remix.

And it comes with an aptly-geometric abstract video for the title track, too.

Artist Christian Montoya explains:

I’m writing today to share my newest album, Forgotten Machines, which I released this morning on 56kbps Records. It was made entirely with the KORG DS10+ software and it has a classic electro meets future techno style. You can think of it as a love letter to early synthesizers.

The description:

FORGOTTEN MACHINES is all about rediscovering old tools and using them to make new art. The story of FORGOTTEN MACHINES is told through the magic of ~dance music~ and was written with the intention of marrying early synth-pop with a future techno aesthetic. This marriage eventually produced a baby, thereafter called FORGOTTEN MACHINES and he is a love letter to classic synthesizers and ~dance music~ enthusiasts everywhere.

It really does sound like DS-10 to me – in fact, with an amount of character even the iOS apps, while great, lack.

I say, blip, blip – dirty nerdy.

http://thisisdecktonic.com/

Decktonic DJing Lomography Gallery Store, New York, speaking of things that are made of plastic and addictively fun. Courtesy the artist.

The record lives. Drip.fm co-founders Sam and Miguel merge subscription ease and affordability with high-quality downloads you keep, and even closer connections to artists and labels. Think “fan club,” not “utility company.” Here, Sam tells CDM how it came about. Photo: Will Calcutt.

PK: In the digital age, subscription services or “all-you-can-eat” music gives passionate listeners nothing if not flexibility and a wealth of music. But they can also distance music lovers from labels they care about – and the reliance on streaming threatens to sever the special relationship you have with albums that are really special.

Drip.fm is different. Founded by Ghostly International, it has the affordable monthly subscription rate – but with actual high-quality downloads you keep. First launched with some of Ghostly’s boutique-quality electronic music, it has since expanded to some big names.

Today could be a watershed moment for the service, with two new labels onboard. As Skrillex rides a wave of new dance music (or “bass music”) fans, his indie label project OWSLA is embracing the subscription model with their digital-only sub-label OWSLA. Alongside the OWSLA releases, they’ll be using the subscription service to distribute rare and unreleased remixes and edits. You get the lot for $12 a month, starting with two WAV compilations to get you started. Think “stuff you won’t hear on Spotify,” or “stuff you’ll hear on Spotify … but not until later.”

Billboard.com, for one, is taking notice:
Skrillex, OWSLA Label Announce The Nest: Subscription Service

Not a fan of Skrillex and friends? Turbo Recordings is also launching their content on the service. The Montreal-based label founded by Tiga is another boutique shop (see Resident Advisor profile) – just the kind of uniquely-focused music house (and house music) that would seem to fit the model perfectly. It’s the pricing of a big subscription service like Spotify, but with a narrow stream of music rather than “search for a slightly-incomplete catalog of everything.”

Oh, and vinyl lovers, the subscription model could matter to you, too: Drip.fm’s Ghostly channel is holding a vinyl sale today in honor of 12.12.12.

That’s the big picture. For the inside story, though, it’s best to turn to Ghostly’s founder for a view of why, at its heart, the service has more in common with a traditional fan service than generic all-you-can-eat music. It’s about fans rather than, say, cable TV subscribers.

It’s personally exciting for me to see where this has come, because it is an entirely DIY effort. Some music endeavors go out and get a bunch of venture funding and hire developers. Here, Drip.fm co-founder Miguel just sat with his laptop and started coding at the outset – I know, because Miguel and I were sitting working away in the same coffee shop – cum – karaoke bar in Manhattan last year and I got to watch over his shoulder. (I guess the coffee was working. And a lot of people probably just check Facebook. They’ve since grown from those beginnings.)

Interview: Sam

Dynamic duo. Photo: Will Calcutt.

CDM’s Matt Earp was able to catch up with Sam Valenti IV, founder of Ghostly International, at the 11th San Francisco Music Tech conference at Hotel Kabuki in mid-October. He told us about the Drip.FM, the service founded by Ghostly that’s been around for a year and a half, giving us some insight into its genesis and where it might be going.

Can you give me the elevator pitch for what Drip.fm is?

Sure, we think of it as a way for fans to have a subscription service to access recurring premium content from labels they love.

The idea came from the fact that Ghostly, as a label, never had that missing link of a fan club. And we had a lot of fans saying to us “why can’t we just give you our credit card and have you send us stuff – just don’t make us work for it.” Which makes sense because the music industry is kind of stupid – we promote a bunch of stuff and then say “Here’s all this stuff! Now wait three months till you can get it.” Which is sort of backwards – when it finally comes out maybe you won’t even know that it’s out. So we wanted to build something that was really easy and fun and had perks and a sense of community where the super fan could get things for a monthly fee.

And it started with just the Ghostly label?

Yes, starting about 18 months ago (early 2011). And without even really trying, just by using Facebook and Twitter, we were getting people who wanted to join. After about 6 months we thought “OK, this is a real thing, let’s open it up”. And from that came the Drip.fm concept as it is today, where it can handle multiple subscriptions.

And then we went to the labels that we know, the labels that we love, and said “Hey, this thing is working for us, you should try it, there’s no risk, give it a shot.”

How many users were you at when you started approaching other labels?

Maybe a couple hundred. It wasn’t anything earthshaking but there was a lot of people who were getting excited about it, so we said “let’s just show this out”. Especially because as a label you could be involved without a significant amount of time invested – I mean on the product side it was a lot of time for us to build it but as a label it’s just uploading things, and enough labels were enthusiastic that we kept going with it. And we’ve added about one to two labels a month for the last 10 months.

Who are some of the other labels?

So December of 2011 we started with Dirtybird from San Francisco, then Stones Throw was January, and since then it’s been Fools Gold, Mad Decent, Domino, Morr Music, Luaka Bop, Now Again, Jagjaguwar, Dead Oceans, Polyvinyl, 6 Degrees, Planet E, and Wav.Pool – just a smattering of well-curated indies that have different perspectives. We didn’t want it to be a genre thing, it was more about who could tell a good story with their releases, who has a good catalog, and who was good at building fans.

Did you approach those labels or did any of them come to you?

Some came to us, some we went to them. We have a lot of labels who still want to get in but we’re still at the point where we want to make sure it’s a good service, that it’s working well, so we’re onboarding slowly. Because we don’t want to spend all our time answering customer service tickets, we want to focus on making a really good experience and then when we’re ready we’ll open up the doors a little wider.

Who built it and is someone now dedicated to running it full time?

Miguel [Senquiz], my cofounder, who’s the tech lead at Ghostly built the early version, and then our lead developer built a new version. We’re trying to find a balance – the Ghostly team is a strong enough group that so far they’ve been able to put time into Drip without detracting from the Ghostly products because obviously that’s still a big part of our lives. But now we’re entering that next phase where it’s going to be a full-time team and my time gradient is going more towards Drip as well.

Pick a label you love, like Ghostly as seen here, and you get high-quality releases that focus on their artists and albums, including rarities. Download them as high-quality files.

Is it the same perks as you described for Ghostly for the other labels as well?

That’s actually a funny question because they’re almost hacking it to make it work for them – giving away concert tickets was one of the label’s ideas, doing Q&As and videos was another label’s idea. So they’re using the service as they want to use it, and that in turn is teaching us how we should be building it.

You’ve already become a platform.

Yeah, we want people to innovate and then tell us “Hey, it would be great if you could do this.” Which is another reason to keep it small for now, so that we can respond to those requests in a timely fashion.

[At this point a tweaker dude turns to us and says “Hey guys, can you do me a favor, I’m sorry to interrupt, I’ve got that machine open, I’m trying to buy a building … and I need to go upstairs, get this scanned and come back, so if someone sits at it, tell ‘em, you know, ‘don’t f***in’ touch it.’” Sam and I do our best to fend off the people that try to interfere with the transaction – which equaled 0.]

Significant releases and rarities are often left off of streaming services and online stores. Here, you get this fine new album by our friend Heathered Pearls – no loss in quality, no wait, no missing the music.

How do fans interact with the service – online, or through an app?

Just online for now.

Do you have plans to move into the mobile space?

I think so, but for right now instead of thinking about mobile we’re trying to think about what it is that Drip does for you and then from that figure out if it makes sense to do that on your mobile device. Trying to think of it more holistically – obviously mobile is where everybody is but right now we’re very download-centric, there’s a lot of DJs and audiophiles who like it because they can get high-quality files, so it’s more a question of “What does Drip want to be?” and what lends itself to mobile.

But it sounds like Drip itself is a big part of Ghostly now.

Yeah, it’s one of our revenue streams. Obviously iTunes and streaming is a huge part of the business, as is our web store and licensing. So it’s not like it will chip away at what we’re already doing. But what is nice about it is that building Drip is building a relationship with fans. More and more people are move into streaming businesses, which is obviously a good thing for fans, but we as a label are losing the ability to connect to them. It’s almost like once they’re off the grid they’re off the grid. So having them in the family through Drip we can hear from them, find out what they think and say “Check out this artist we just found.”

The menu of labels grows, in a hand-picked network of focused offerings like Carl Craig’s Planet E.

So for the Ghostly stuff, have you put tracks on there that aren’t actually signed to Ghostly?

Absolutely, because our schedule is already full but we still like a lot of music, and if the artists are cool with it we say “can we offer this as a Drip exclusive?” And the artists actually get paid for it as well [even if they’re not already signed to Ghostly]. We’ve even been leaned towards signing stuff that we put up on the service and then there was so much feedback from Drip that we were encourage to make a signing.

How many members in total now?

We’re not publishing that info yet because it’s still early days, but we’re really happy with how it’s going. Our hypothesis was that people will pay in advance, and that was kind of a wild notion, because everyone’s like “music’s free, it’s over” and I’m like “No, people will pay if it’s curated, if it’s a fan club and if it’s a concierge service in a way where you’re getting first look at a lot of cool stuff.” And so far it’s been successful.

Ed.: Ready to try it yourself? I have been for over a year on Ghostly’s catalog – and as a particular fan of a few Ghostly artists, it’s been something I’ve really loved using. Of course, having a label you want is key, but have a look below and let us know what you think. Still sticking to Spotify? iTunes? Beatport? Vinyl? The radio? Curious to know reader perspectives as artists and listeners. Thanks, Matt! -PK

http://drip.fm

“Look, [darling significant other], it’ll even be totally at home in our modern decor!” Photos courtesy the artist.

The desire to be a little different in a band might drive someone to choose a custom guitar, or maybe, you know, change their hair.

For some, it drives them to build a giant flying saucer they can play like an instrument by waving their hands. No, MIDI controller, don’t destroy Earth. Klaatu barada nikto. That’s the case with Helsinki-born artist Tommi Koskinen, now doing this as part of an MA thesis in the Media Lab of Aalto University.

Another strange gestural controller? Yes. But this flying saucer might just land a bit closer to home. This is just the first prototype; eventually, the developer promises a kit and open source code. And the whole thing can easily work with software and hardware – here, he’s using Ableton Live (though anything that receives MIDI data will work).

So, what is this thing?

• Five ultrasonic sensors – that is, distance sensors based on ultrasonic echo location (a typical range-finding sensor)
• Send MIDI notes, using gestures to send notes with controller data. (This is a bit like the Theremin arrangement – and like any touch-less arrangement lacks tangible feedback – but with more axes of data. And unlike the Theremin, it’s tuned to scaled octaves so you send fixed notes, as on a piano.)
• Send controller data.
• LEDs for feedback on modes.
• MIDI out. USB class compliance (for USB MIDI).
• Built around Arduino Mega 2560

Planned for the future:

Presets that you can store and recall
Sustain pedal support
MIDI IN for arpeggio clock sync
Arpeggiator patterns
LFO CC curves
Quick switching of presets by sending MIDI commands to the device

In the meantime, yes, Tommi does play this in his two bands:
http://kitkaliitto.com/
http://wearephantom.com/

Here’s a live performance from the latter, Phantom:

Basso Live: Phantom 16.11.2012 from Basso Media on Vimeo.

Techcrunch has a nice write-up, beyond our normal solar system of music tech planets:
Control Music Synthesizers With Gestures Through This Arduino-Based Saucer Called ‘The UFO’

And yes, UFO stands for Ultrasonic Frequency cOntroller.

Via Benjamin at DE:BUG (Deutsch).

More info, some cute concept sketches, and sign-up for a mailing list to be notified when the kit is ready:
http://theufocontroller.com/

Carrying her musical life on her back – in more ways than one. Zoe Keating, by Nadya Lev for Coilhouse. Photo courtesy the artist.

She shocked the music business by revealing she wasn’t making money on Spotify – then shocked them again by revealing she was making money on our own. Now, CDM’s Matt Earp talks to cellist Zoe Keating about surviving as a creative musician, and keeping the music coming. Hint: “exposure” is not necessarily the key to survival. -Ed.

Zoe Keating is an avant-garde cellist, a Canadian transplant to San Francisco who now lives on its far outskirts. Her sound slips back and forth between the classical and electronic worlds, conjuring sylvan images and dusty warehouses with equal clarity. Two self-released full-lengths, a couple dozen collaborations, and a decade of touring into her career, she’s been steadily working her way towards greater recognition throughout the West Coast of America as well as the rest of the world.

Around mid-summer this year, Keating released a public Google Doc that reported her earnings from Spotify – which turned out to be around 3/10th of a cent per listen. (Nice summary article here in The Atlantic). This opened up a can of worms for the streaming content world, and was the first public shot in what has become an increasingly voluble debate about how much musicians earn from streaming services. Other bands followed suit with numbers. Pandora countered with numbers of its own. Cartoons on the subject were even made.

To round out the picture, a month later, Keating released ALL the information she had about her music sales from the previous year (2011), causing further attention and stir. And making her a bit of a cause célèbre as an information hactvist in the muddled world of music, income, and the relationship between artists, labels, and digital services of all kinds.

CDM was able to catch up with her at October’s SF Music Tech conference, where she spoke on Artists, Entrepeneurs and Technology (you can catch some of the video of that talk below). She told us about what had happened since she released her sales info to the public, her thoughts on distribution models, and her upcoming album.

How did you release your last album, 2010’s Into The Trees?

Last time, I finished the album two weeks before I gave birth in a mad rush, and two weeks after, I put it up for sale on Bandcamp. [see the album below] And that was it – that was my distribution strategy.

Did it appear anywhere else, or was it 100% BandCamp?

I also have an account with iTunes, so I put it up there simultaneously. But I didn’t have a release date, I didn’t worry if they were synchronized or anything, I just don’t do that kind of thing. And so far it’s done pretty well!

Can you tell us more about what happened after you released the information about your 2011 record sales?

There was one camp, mostly people in this music industry sphere who talk and blog about the music industry, who were totally shocked that I’d made any money selling music at all. As though that was a totally novel concept. And the result of that was that people said ‘Oh, you’re an anomaly.” I had sort of been hoping that the story would become “Look, here on the fringes, things are good.” And they said “Well, you’re an anomaly, there’s no one else like you.”

And then the other thing that happened has been a little bit of feedback along the lines of “OK, well, you’re doing fine as an artist, so maybe you don’t need our support any more. Maybe I don’t need to buy your albums because you’re doing fine.”

Did anyone approach you afterwards and say “will you give us data again in the future or will you turn yourself into an ongoing experiment?”

Well, for the most part I should say that that the majority of the feedback has generally been overwhelmingly positive – maybe I should have said that first. And people saying “Wow, I had no idea, I wish more artists would do this.” So that was encouraging and I’ve continued to release information since then just because there seems to be a lack of knowledge about this subject and I feel like I need to keep putting it out there.

The other thing I’ve been trying to do since then, since I got the anomaly comment, is I’m trying to find other artists in the same position as myself , to see whether I am an anomaly – that is, I’m a non-legacy artist, I run my business myself, and I make the majority of my living through music sales.

And have you found any?

Surprisingly few. So I’ve been trying to put out the world before SF Music Tech that I wanted to find more artists like myself because we need to be talking about our lives, about how we make a living, because I think it’s important. So I would love to find more artists.

Photo by Lane Hartwell, courtesy the artist.

Would you like to find more information? Or is there information about your own income that you don’t have?

Well, I want information on my ecosystem. Am I really the only artist in my ecosystem, are there more artists like me, where are they, etc?

It does seems to me like there’s something about the people that purchase my music that is different from the mainstream. Say if there’s 2% of all music listeners who purchase music, if that – I don’t actually know what it actually is but it’s probably something pretty low – I think that my audience is those people. They tend to be people who are avid listeners of music who are interested in supporting artists directly – I think I have a high percentage of those kinds of listeners, and that’s what my business revolves around. That is, making music for myself and for them.

And where I’ve been making some distinctions recently is that I’ve been going for quality listens over quantity listens. For me, when I buy music, I’ll pay $30 for some expensive album that has hardly anything on it, and I’ll listen to it maybe twice a year. And I’ll listen to it with great pleasure, making it extremely valuable to me. And I’ve been realizing that that kind of music is a bit worthless in the mainstream streaming model, where it’s all about how many times has the thing been listened to. But the music that I’m often interested in is something that you’re not going to listen to all the time, it’s not musical wallpaper, it’s something you’re going to listen carefully to. So I think that the economics around that kind of music, which is where I live –

Do you think that’s the kind of music that you make?

[laughs] I don’t know, I’ll leave that for my listeners to decide, but it is the kind of music sphere that I think of myself being in. And I think that has a slightly different model than the one which is often put forward in the press – one that says “You’ve got to do everything you can to get exposure.” That your main problem is exposure, solve your exposure problem and everything else will follow. I don’t think that that’s actually true for me.

Ed.: I can’t resist referring to this definition of exposure.

How did SF Music Tech approach you to share your experiences?

Well, I’ve been coming to it since it started and I’m really interested in the conference in general. I tend to go to tech conferences in general because I like that sort of headspace – people at them are often thinking about problems for the future, doing interesting thought experiments and that sort of thing. And I often find music conferences are kind of depressing, so I don’t tend to go to them. I think of my team as the tech team – those are my people. And I like the way that this conference merges these two worlds together, so that you can start the process of thinking and talking, and I’ve had lots of interesting conversations with people here about how could you solve problems for artists like me through technology.

You’re working on a new album for release hopefully next year – any insight on how you’ll be releasing it in light of your findings?

Well that’s another reason I’m here, because the models for distribution continually change, there’s more tools, there’s more interesting ways to reach people, so I’m looking to see if there’s anything I can do differently this time rather than just suddenly announce “Hey, it’s available.”

It’s been a little slower to make this time because I have a son who’s now two and a half, and his room is my studio. I was actually thinking of calling the album “Across the Street” because I’ve been working in a neighbor’s house across the street for most it.

Ed.: Apart from stirring up business controversy, Zoe makes music that we really love. Take a listen:

http://www.zoekeating.com/