I went and checked out Share a month or so ago and it was really awesome. It made me wish I had a laptop more than ever so I could get in on the fun. Someday. *sigh*
No reason why these kind of things shouldn't pop up in other cities too.
----- Original Message -----
From: John von Seggern <johnvon@digitalcutuplounge.com>
Date: Saturday, July 12, 2003 11:26 am
Subject: [idm] wish we had this in LA?
quoted 198 lines > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/technology/circuits/10jamm.html
>
> *July 10, 2003
> Clash, Then Synthesis: Joys of a Laptop Jam
> By JOHANNA JAINCHILL
>
> *IN his native West Virginia, George Cicci arouses curiosity when
> he
> gets on stage at local open-mike events and turns out beats on his
> iBook
> laptop between sets of bluegrass guitarists and rockabilly bands.
> While
> the crowd is always receptive to the innovative sounds he mixes,
> he
> says, he is still the only laptop musician around.
>
> Last month he found a community of kindred spirits in Manhattan,
> where
> he was a featured guest at Openair, an East Village bar where
> dozens of
> laptop artists play together each week in an open jam session.
>
> Openair is an indistinct lounge at 121 St. Marks Place with tinted
> windows and no sign. The door is barely noticeable but for a few
> smokers
> gathered outside. Yet every Sunday starting at 5 p.m., the bar
> draws
> performers with laptops in tow to share their musical and visual
> creations, composed or improvised.
>
> "It's not far from a traditional music jam where people bring
> instruments and play together in a band," said Geoff Matters, 26,
> one of
> the event's founders. "It's just that the instruments people are
> using
> are software and hardware tools."
>
> Daniel Vatsky, a regular, is grateful for the opportunity. "I
> wasn't
> performing before I came here," he acknowledged between sips of
> beer at
> the lounge, his_ Apple_ Power Mac G4 in front of him and a tangle
> of
> wires at his feet that connect the laptop to the club's sound
> system.
> "It's a really unique place because even if you're just starting
> out you
> can come and play with live musicians. It's important you're not
> just
> putting on a track you already know. You're constantly being
> thrown a
> curveball."
>
> Jon H. Appleton, director of the electro-acoustic music graduate
> program
> at Dartmouth College, describes laptop music as "a kind of
> electronic
> music using new sounds and ambient textures.''
>
> "People can just pick up and do it just using the software," he
> said.
> Laptop music may have an aggressive beat that sounds warped and
> filtered, or the atmospheric outer-space effect of ambient music;
> like
> electronica, it borrows samples from many different styles of
> music.
> When a group starts playing, the sound can be jarringly
> cacophonous
> because it takes a while for the performers to get in sync with
> one another.
>
> Most of those attending the weekly event, called Share, are
> performers
> rather than viewers or listeners. As Mr. Appleton put it, laptop
> music
> can be "strange for the listener" because "the performers
> understand
> what they're doing, but the audience doesn't." The visual element
> can
> therefore help. Some of those taking part, like Mr. Vatsky, are
> V.J.'s -
> computer artists who use computers to mix images that are
> projected on
> screens in a synthesis with the music.
>
> Rich Panciera, a laptop musician known as Lloop, started the
> weekly
> party two years ago with Mr. Matters and another friend, Daniel
> Smith, a
> computer musician known as Newclueless who is also the bar manager
> at
> Openair. They intended to start a laptop club to trade ideas and
> music
> applications, and they express amazement at the way the night evolved.
>
> "We call this our pretty little weed patch," Mr. Panciera said.
> "It just
> grows on its own. You give it a little tending and everyone who
> participates benefits, because you pool experiences and resources.
> It's
> really blossomed into a very community-driven thing."
>
> The participants, predominantly male, mostly use Macintosh
> laptops,
> although Mr. Smith, a Briton with a ponytail, noted a "smattering"
> of
> Windows PC's. Attendance varies from 25 to 100, with more people
> turning
> out to hear featured guests. Share's popularity has been boosted
> mostly
> by word of mouth and its live Web broadcast of the Sunday event at
> www.share.dj.
>
> Mr. Cicci, the West Virginian, praised his experience at Share,
> where he
> and Chris Coleman, a V.J. he met at West Virginia University,
> perform
> live under the name Finder. Mr. Coleman analyzes and makes visual
> images
> of Mr. Cicci's beats and sounds, always aiming for innovation.
>
> "Nobody else has any of these sounds on their hard drives or in
> their
> samples, anywhere in the world," said Mr. Cicci, who chiefly uses
> Live,
> an audio software program from Ableton, to create and mix his
> sounds.
> "That's what we really go for. We just take a basic wave form and
> build
> on it and build on it and build on it until it's our own."
>
> Finder was a featured act on a night when Pixelache, a group of
> Finnish
> computer artists from an audiovisual laboratory in Helsinki, came
> to
> promote its audiovisual projects. Juha Huuskonen, the group's
> organizer,
> who had heard about Share from a Webcast, said it was in line with
> his
> own group's work.
>
> "The important thing is that they are creating the sound and the
> video
> together as performers," he explained. "It's a symbiotic situation."
>
> Mr. Huuskonen said he was pleased that some participants had
> developed
> their own software, as people in his laboratory have. "People
> don't want
> off-the-shelf solutions," he said.
>
> Mr. Matters, for instance, helped develop a music performance and
> D.J.
> mixing software called GDAM, which uses filters and effects to
> continuously recreate and modify sounds. (He performs under the
> name
> geoffGDAM.)
>
> "I'll be playing something that sounds very close to the original,
> but
> it will be rearranged into a shuffling beat rather than a straight
> beat," he said. "Or it will be backwards to forwards or cut in and
> out
> on the beat. The noise is almost entirely removed from the
> original
> source material."
> Eric Redlinger, a V.J. identifiable at Share by his ever-present
> backward cap, said the Openair event had inspired similar sessions
> in
> Amsterdam, Berlin and Bordeaux, France, and that others were
> planned in
> Boston and San Francisco. The appeal of the party is its openness,
> he
> said. "There's a democratizing factor to what we do," he said.
> "Anyone
> can walk in."
>
> --
> John von Seggern
>
> producer remixer DJ
> Digital Cutup Lounge [Los Angeles / Hong Kong]
> <" target="l">http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com>
>
> film and TV scoring with Terra Incognito [Los Angeles]
> <" target="l">http://www.terra-incognito.us>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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