One thing that I really enjoy is going around and capturing sounds with my tape recorder. From ambient background sound to conversations to live music...
Have you ever heard, seen or otherwise witnessed a Monkey Chant? Well I did, and I just happened to have my handy audio recorder with me. Now this isn't a recording out in the Balinese countryside, not even close. It was recorded during a celebration that took place at the 2010 Science and Non-Duality conference. I was there s a volunteer using my audio and video expertise to record sessions of the conference.
I am going to write more on the conference in another of my blogs, but I wanted to share this audio of the monkey chant that opened the Saturday night celebration at the conference.
I am sitting here at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA watching as the final seats are filled for a presentation and book signing for the BostonComics Roundtable, Inbound #4,"A Comic-Book History of Boston". There is a great deal of eager anticipation, for this presentation by history buffs, and comic book aficionados alike, since this book is a collection of 35 stories of Boston's history.
The presentation began with an introduction by Boston Comics Roundtable founder Dave Kender. He explained a little about the book. From there, a number of artists and writers who created works for this collaborative book came up to explain how they created their stories. Here is a list of the people who spoke:
I had the opportunity to attend an Ableton Live seminar featuring Kid Beyond at the King King club in Hollywood presented by Dubspot. I had a front row seat (on the dirty floor of the club) and I brought my handy dandy Olympus LS-10 recorder.
Kid Beyond is a pretty amazing entertainer (and a really nice guy). My friend Harp DaKnobs is Kid's audio engineer, and that is how I got turned on to Kid's brand of beatboxing. Now I don't mean to diminish Kid's talents by just referring to him as a beatboxer. He is that and a lot more, primarily due to his use of Ableton Live. He uses Live to create soundscapes where he emulates all of the various instruments of a song, including the vocals, Simply amazing.
The photo presented here was taken at the event, and shows some of his bag of tricks. He is using Ableton Live on his Laptop (not in the picture) but he doesn't really use it while he is performing, it is just running in the background while he uses a foot switch panel on the ground to trigger different parts of the application that he has set up ahead of time. Live captures his sounds and loops them and processes them and allows him to simply step (literally) through all of the parts of the sequence of the song he is performing. This audio is sent out to his monitor mixer that he controls on stage, and also up to Harp in the audio booth for the main mix.
Here is the recording I made of the presentation that Kid gave at the Dubspot Ableton Live Seminar November 8, 2009.
Kid is branching out, working with some other musicians on a new project, Kid Beyond and the Interplanetary Love Army, so check out the next level of evolution from Kid Beyond. You can even find Kid on DJ Hero and Rock Band video games
I am sitting here at 