Communikey11!!

20110413-20110417

Opening Night at Bombay Bistro

Wow, it was only a week ago, but time is just flying by.  Communikey, for those of you who don't know is Boulder, Colorado's Festival of Electronic Art and Music.  Check out past year's festivals.  I've been involved for the past 3 years, and attending for the past 4.  This was the fourth edition of the festival, and it was a tremendous success.  My role is to act as technical lead at various venues and assist with tech issues as they arise.

Normal Ones and Jason from offthesky in the ATLAS Black Box
  
This is a fairly media heavy post, so please bear with the loading times :)  And there's lots more after the break and on Flickr and YouTube.

 

Pulshar at the ATLAS Black Box

Wordle!

So while procrastinating things you should be doing, check out this little applet called Wordle.  It lets you input text from a file or a website and then creates a great collage of the most commonly used words.  You can find a nice random arrangement, but you can also tweak the settings to your tastes.  I've made a few, and they look really cool when printed out onto 4x6 photo paper.  Anyway, procrastinate on!

The Arc... and The Future of Music Controllers

monome.org - The Arc

 

 

So, one of the things that I like (but also one of the things that scares me) about technology is how quickly the hardware and software we use changes.  There are many approaches to address this problem, and one is to read as much as possible about what is on the cutting edge.  Recently, on createdigitalmotion.com they featured a new digital music controller made by the same folks at monome. 

Balinese Gamelan Documentary

Here is a copy of a short documentary I helped make this past fall. It was created for a course on ritual and media at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It documents the 2010, November 7th Gamelan performance at IMIG music center.

Gamelan is the "why" of life, it is as important as food. I Made Lasmawan instructs the group as well as many other gamelans across Colorado and the US. This film was made in iMovie for simplicity and in collaboration with a group.






Check out the other documentary I made this year The 1996 Ute Mountain Ute Bear Dance.

I have a degree in what...?

Go ahead... ask me. I can explain it to you, but the best way to understand it is to experience it. But that's the best part! Anyone can experience ethnomusicology, if they have some interest in learning about music and how we as humans interact with it. That is essentially what ethnomusicology is.  Now, who here doesn't like music? Moving on.

I graduated with a Bachelors in Ethnomusicology with certificates in Music and “Technology, Arts and Media” from the University of Colorado Boulder. While it took five years, I learned a lot during my progression from engineer to musician to technologist. At each step I learned a little more about how they are all related. What’s next?

I’m currently thinking about some graduate schools, as well as just jumping into the workforce. Either way, I am going to take a little time to clear my head from school and work on projects I’ve had to put off for so long now. Projects that will ultimately show up in this blog...

(Seriously if you want to know more about ethnomusicology, email me)

Ute Mountain Ute Bear Dance Documentary

Since May of this year, I have been working with Dr. Brenda Romero on an ethnomusicology documentary for the Ute Mountain Ute tribe.  After taking her course in Native American Music, we discussed editing some video footage of an event she had captured previously in 1996.  The footage featured the 'music complex' surrounding the annual Bear Dance including festivities like a parade, powwow, feast, and games.  However, she was still showing it in its raw format, fast forwarding to portions that were interesting.  So, with the help of a UROP grant, we began editing the tapes into an hour long documentary.

Javanese Gamelan Transcriptions for Rachel Chacko

I was asked by Rachel Chacko, a Ph.D. graduate, to help her digitize some Javanese Gamelan transcriptions. Confident in my abilities, I agreed to to the project. Unfortunately, I did not realize how difficult this task would be. The learning curve for the transcription program (Finale) is very steep and the music requires very complex concepts to be shown. For example, most of the notations are in 9/8 time, but many measures have 10 beats in them... at first this was impossible for me to do. But after many hours in the lab, I eventually cracked the program before it cracked me. However, I did come away from the experience with a new skill set and the confidence that I can manipulate a wide variety of programs. This is a crucial skill in ethnomusicology.

Email me for more information about any kind of music transcriptions or customized sheet music.