A Modest List of iOS Music Apps and Resources

My friend Tim Risher and I were chatting about doing some more work together, under The Avatar Consorte moniker again, and he has been playing with GeoSonix for the past few months. I’d created a Bidule module to run with a GeoSonix file, the GS file providing the MIDI input to the Bidule, so I pulled it up this afternoon and started messing about. I’d added the full version of Camel Audio’s most excellent Alchemy to the stable a little time ago and I wanted to try out some of the wonderful sounds I now have available.

Messing about is always the best description when I start using a generative process; it always takes a bit of tweaking before I’m happy with how things take off … this time was no different.

The first track went well and it occurred to me that there were some interesting permutations still possible with the Bidule setup, so a second track is recording even now.

Here’s what things look like:

I can’t promise when the audio will be available — I’ll need to give a serious listening before I go unleashing it in finished form.

“Hacking Blindness”

Posted on 01/03/2013 by Dennis Moser

Life can be so very strange — this post is less about my music and more about music and the musicians that I have come to know.

Mandy Matz is someone whom I have never met face to face, but that fact is unimportant. I first heard of her through the writing of Warren Ellis* — Warren likes to mention talk about the music he happens to be listening to when he’s working and it can be a whole new set of rabbit holes down which to fall — several years back, he mentioned some of Mandy’s work, then under the name of “Theory Anaesthetic” and I followed the links to give a listen. She’s based in Chicago and it’s not hard to turn up quite a few references to her with a quick search online. I’ve managed to keep up with her on Facebook, so if you’re there, you can look her up there, too.

But life is full of twists and turns and this morning, I learned of a new chapter in her life. She has started a new blog called “Hacking Blindness.” She is being treated for glaucoma and this is how she is documenting her experiences with the disease and her determination to find ways of continuing to create music.

I hope that those of you who read this occasional blog will go and become regular readers of her writings … please consider it.

*If you don’t know Warren’s work, you may be missing out. A lot! You can play catch-up here: http://www.warrenellis.com/ … I miss his Freak Angel series. He’s never boring…

Music from last Thursday

Posted on 21/02/2013 by Dennis Moser

“Music from last Thursday” is the name of a program that a friend does each week, featuring music sometimes very much like what I do, sometimes not, but music well worth giving a listen.

Tonight’s program will feature, among a host of others, a track by Yours Truly that I put together recently to have some fun using dear old Plogue Bidule. Basically, the piece is part of the on-going explorations I’ve been doing of creating “systems” that are set into motion through a series of notes and with various delays and processors yields up something interesting for listening — or not!

I hope you’ll tune in tonight and give a listen; click on the links above for more details.

“No Labels, No Music IV” or “At -40°F, The Ghosts Come Out”

Posted on 05/01/2013 by Dennis Moser

“No Labels, No Music IV” is a new project I’m participating in for 2013 … all the compositions are based on a shared set of field recordings, processed as we see fit. My submission is entitled “At -40°F, The Ghosts Come Out.”

Here’s how it went:

The next step was to render those files into a FLAC file that I would then muck about in Plogue Bidule to finalize the creation. That looked like this:

The output of this process was then examined in Amadeus Pro, to make sure the fade-ins and fade-outs were handled the way I wanted and that looked like this:

… and as I’ve suggested, THAT can be heard here —https://soundcloud.com/usrsbin/at-40f-theghostscomeout

Here’s the list of files used, from the electro-music website —

http://electro-music.com/forum/index.php?f=179

Files used:

1. dripping_water_ravens_20101022_136.wav
2. copier_129.mp3
3. fieldrecicelimbcrack_206.mp3
4. metalwater_158.mp3
5. recycling_center_1_102.mp3

Enjoy!

Returning to The Light …

Posted on 24/12/2012 by Dennis Moser

So the Solstice has come and gone (and those other holidays are being celebrated with the usual mania that they bring) and we’re welcoming the fact that we’re going to start having a little more daylight up here on The Last Frontier.

There’s been some new music happening and I’ve been a bit remiss in updating here, so I’ll try and make amends now.

Much Ado About Nothing (with all respect to The Bard) — that’s what could be said about the craziness of the supposed end of the Mayan calendar last week. What is it about our race that we have this amazing fascination with our own demise? That we are continually predicting new apocalypses (hmmm, Spell-Check seemed to accept that as the proper plural)? Anyway, Sound For Good Music (http://sound4good.bandcamp.com/) was inspired by the crazy and had a fun little compilation to raise money for electro-music.com, host of a number of my own performances and those of some of my friends as well. It is called, appropriately “Doomsday and Brimstone.” It’s downloadable for $1 US or more and for a very good cause, especially if you believe in supporting live music and/or experimental music (why else would you be reading all this, eh?). We’ll be doing another one, soon, in 2013 for one of my all-time favorite webradio stations, Stillstream.com — watch for details on that one, too.

And speaking of Stillstream, you’ve seen me mention Rebekkah Hilgraves and her show “At Water’s Edge” here before — she’s been playing some of my tracks and I’m really grateful for it. She recently featured a track from one of my 2010 Full Moon Lunacy Concert Series (that link returns about 20 of my releases in the Internet Archives), the November event (release was called “After the Road Closed“), on her show entitled “Winter Solstice, or The End of The World As We Know It.”

Fun stuff, fun evening of music. Again, a warm thank you to Rebekkah for her continuing support of my work — she’s bringing back the spirit of Darrell Burgan’s Blue Water Drift Dive show that was such a hallmark of Stillstream … she’s on every Saturday night (details in the link above and on the Stilltream pages), so please support her by listening in and maybe join the conversation in the Chat room, too!

31 December is approaching rapidly and, with it, another live streaming broadcast on the aforementioned electro-music.com. This year, I’ll be taking part (actually playing close to the end, at 05:00 GMT on 1 January, 2013 — sorry, you’ll have to do your own time zone calculations for that one!) and it will be the first live stream from the new studio up here. Got in the studio yesterday evening with The Godin and have started getting things tweaked and ready for the event. Here are some particulars:

~ The show starts at 13:00 GMT 31 December 2012 and runs until 06:00 GMT 1 January 2013

~ You can see a poster, with the schedule of performers, here …

~ The show also celebrates 10 years of electro-music.com !

Finally, some news about τρόπος et χημεία (Tropos et Chemeia) — my 2012 National Solo Album creation. The audio is fine, but I’m not happy with the way the CD liner text came out. I’ll need to see if I can get it edited so that things are displaying properly and do the Kunaki thing again. I’m hoping I can wrap that up before the 31st!

Onward, into The Light!

Dipping Your Toes “At Water’s Edge”…the water’s fine.

Posted on 09/12/2012 by Dennis Moser

Fun last night, taking part in Rebekkah Hilgraves’ “At Water’s Edge” show on Stillstream. Four hours of musicians experimenting with the Eno & Chilvers iOS app, “Scape,” some live studio performances and lots of great tracks.

For those who might have missed it, the podcast is online of the show.

I’ve posted all my tracks as a continuous track, available for listening here:

https://soundcloud.com/usrsbin/sets/scapes-for-at-waters-edge-8

Headphones are highly suggested … enjoy!

National Solo Album Month, 2012: τρόπος et χημεία (Tropos et Chemeia)

Posted on 18/11/2012 by Dennis Moser

Here is a link to a sampler of the five tracks that I put together for my 2012 National Solo Album Month endeavor:

http://soundcloud.com/usrsbin/sets/nasoalmo2012/

All music composed and performed by Dennis Moser, aka “usr/sbin” using Plogue Bidule, running on a 13” Macbook Pro, under OS X 10.8.2 Some rights reserved; released on the audiozoloft netlabel, November 2012. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

You can contact me here if you’re interested in playing the full album (it will be available shortly on CD Baby and Amazon both); leave a note in the comments.

It’s November, the Election is over, and it’s time for …

Posted on 10/11/2012 by Dennis Moser

National Solo Album Month.

That’s right. It’s that time again. In fact, for some folks, it’s really getting late to be starting on this project.

And that’s really too bad, because this isn’t a competition — it’s really intended to get you out of a slump, stretch those creative muscles a little, and have some fun.

If you’re not familiar with NaSoAlMo, check out this website:

http://www.nasoalmo.org/

And check back here to see how I do with this…I’m busily messing with Plogue Bidule even as I type this!

New Space Music Compilation

Posted on 14/10/2012 by Dennis Moser

Another compilation, this time for the Farm Sanctuary:

Now with more Baumgartner! (The new track is titled ”KP Index 7 and Rising Quickly” in recognition of the amazing aurora borealis displays we have been having in Alaska for the past week…if you’re in doubt, do a search on “KP Index” and you’ll understand).

No Imagination

"You're only limited by your imagination — and that's a pretty serious limitation!"