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]
<
http://www.digitalcutuplounge.com>
film and TV scoring with Terra Incognito [Los Angeles]
<
http://www.terra-incognito.us>
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