Don't take Everything so Seriously

I saw this squirrel lounging on my tree and I managed to capture a picture of it. Just a good little reminder to kick back and enjoy life every now and then. (Click on it to see the full size)

Image by E.J. Posselius © 2009

Piano Wizard at the Boulder Autism Society Picnic

Earlier this week I worked with Allegro Multimedia (Music Wizard Group), makers of Piano Wizard at the Rocky Mountain Venture Capital Conference. We made some valuable contacts, and it was good to work with MWG again. I was also given the opportunity to work another event later that week.

I was asked to demo the product at the Boulder Autism Society picnic. This was an extremely rewarding event - I had a handful of children who were glued to the game. One particular student, Abby showed a tremendous amount of progress, despite the unexpectedly cold and cloudy morning, not to mention a number of other distractions. The company was friendly and I learned quickly that special needs parents are very sharp, and so are their children. This event was extremely rewarding, and I look forward to working with MWG again.

'The Interactive Piano' TAM Capstone Thesis Installation

The Technology, Arts & Media (TAM) certificate is [was] a 21 credit hour program that the ATL&S building offers. [It is now a minor known as MTAM] It consists of classes on digital/social theory, specific graphic/web/video/etc software programs, and a Capstone class. For my thesis installation, I chose to design an exhibit using the building's player piano. You can read about it and see videos and pictures HERE.

This was an extremely interesting project that involved an exciting new blend of technology, music, and networking. I sent hundreds of emails to jump through all the red tape for arranging the specifics of the project and getting various permissions. But, in the end it was worth it, as I was awarded the 'Best in Show' award for the best Capstone exhibit. Check out the vids and pics (at the link above and the video below), this was a very rewarding project to pull off.

Check out Paul Hembree, Anthony Green, Hunter Ewen, Nathan Wheeler, & Matthew Browne

ATL&S Spring 09 Shows

This Spring, I was fortunate enough to land a job working for the Center for Arts, Media, and Performance (CAMP) in the ATL&S building at CU Boulder. Here's a quick rundown of the some of the events I got to help set up and run:

I helped run sound for everything from the Italian Theatre's puppet-reality show, to the Conference on World Affairs, and the Multi-Dimensional Dance Performance Thesis 'Toeplitz'. The artistic and erotic interdisciplinary performance 'Sweeping' was a fresh experience -- we only had the performance day to set up... so when we saw the show, it was for the first time (instead of the usual 5th).

The three musical highlights included Michael Theodore's What I Saw at the Apocalypse, Paul Hembree's The Antikythera Mechanism, and the Boulder Laptop Orchestra's (bLOrk) performance:

Janet Feder in front of the Second Life performance

Communikey 09

Communikey is an annual electronic art and music festival in Boulder that happens on Earth Day weekend.

Normal One's setup

The ATL&S Building hosted a number of electronic music workshops and I attended every one that I could... except for SuperDraw, which I missed for the Wooten masterclass. Morgan Packard's Ripple featured an Evolver - 8 floating point bits that "evolve" over the [8] iterations. The Max for Live preview was the highlight of the workshops for me as I was able to see the future of the software months before the release.

Darwin Grosse, from Cycling '74 gave the preview and showed how MAX/MSP objects will now be able to interact with the Ableton Live environment... I'm very excited to say the least. Next was a screening of the film Speaking in Code, the story of people who devote their entire lives to electronic music. I unfortunately had to leave early to go downstairs and set up for the concert that evening.

NoiseFold Projections

NoiseFold gave an amazing show with layers of evolving sound and visuals, and Gudren Gut was the headliner for the evening. We set the room up for 5.1 surround (for the Normal Ones) and there were some cutting edge electronics being used throughout the performances. There was also an Ableton workshop on Saturday held by Christopher Willts.

Victor Wooten Master Class

Victor Wooten - wikimediaCommons

Victor Wooten was called in as a replacement for the West African Highlife Performance that evening. As part of his commitment to the music community, he gave a secret master class (that about 150 people found out about). He is a fountain of wisdom and a reminder that you don't need to study music theory to understand music, and we often forget this.


Some memorable quotes:

"Change your mind, change your performance."
"If I tell you the answer, it's over."
"When you learned English, you said the word before you understood it."
"Theres a lot of mistakes, but you don't care, do you? Neither do I."
"A mistake is something you didn't think about."
"If you could describe music with only one word, what would it be? Certainly not anything from a theory book."

Thea Musgrave's Narcissus performed by Carolyn Keyes

One of the many interesting things that Music Technologists do these days is rebuild obsolete electronics using modern equipment and techniques. I was commissioned to help Carolyn, a graduate Flute student rebuild an ancient digital delay system (A Vesta Koza DIG-411). More information about this technology and a sound clip after the break.



Carolyn played into a microphone and the program would echo the sounds just emitted, slowly becoming softer. While I was unable to attend the performance of this piece, I have heard that it went off without a hitch. I learned a lot about the difficulties of building a program that can actually be utilized in a real world situation, and I definitely intend to do this kind of thing again in the near future.

Email me for more information about this kind of program or anything similar.

Using my favorite program MAX/MSP, a little help from a paper by David Wetzel, and a midi foot controller (Behringer FCB-1010), I customized a program that allowed Carolyn to change the number of delays as well as the delay length using her feet while performing. There was an additional setting that allowed a delayed sound to play continuously without any decay (until turned off).