mmd

It appears that my song Ghost Debts has won Round 1 of the Renoise 2 Beta Competition! I would never have guessed that I would win given that the genre of this song is hardly my speciality (chip tune hybrid) – nor did I think that this would have done so well when I only spent two days on it. Nevertheless a good flow with composition was upon me and I had genuine fun executing the simple idea of using just one sine wave sample (hand drawn) to generate all the sounds. Renoise is certainly powerful in how you can push and pull sounds in all sorts of directions.

I’ve spent a little time doing a ‘proper mastering’ of the song, which you can now download:

Ghost Debts

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You can also load up the XRNS version into Renoise 2.0 beta 4 or above to see how it’s all done.

Iain Mackay and I have yet again changed the name of our live duo project from Solsonic to Ghost Inputs. It feels good as a name so far, so we’ll have to see if it sticks. We’re set to play live again at the Armidale Club on October the 31st, a suitably dated event for our new name. Reharsals have been fairly solid so far, and we’re really honing in on ‘set ideas’ for songs that allow for refinement rather than plain searching for anything half decent to play. It’s a nice balance between improvisation and highly structured dance beats – you can dance to it but it’s also food for the brain.

So if you happen to be in New England on Halloween do come along to the Armidale Club to see Iain and I do our thing. We’ll try to get some more photos to post here too!

Estonian Renoiser Suva has started a wonderful little podcast of tunes from the Renoise community. The first one is top stuff and is well sequenced. It also features a little except from my 3 Smrgaid Maerd album, Happy Pain. It’s fairly possible I’ll feature in future podcasts of Remixta, so I’ll keep you updated if that happens.

Due to frustration with not being technically proficient in web work I’ve made the move over to a new website that is completely run off WordPress. This already has proven to much more friendly to use than staring blankly at code on a white screen wondering what it all means and how on earth do I fixed it all after breaking tags, and so on. The new working address for everything shall start from here:

http://m.thequietrevolution.net/mmd/

If you look closely about you’ll see that work is still very much in progress, so don’t be alarmed at a broken link or two. No content is lost but some of it will take time to emerge fully in the new structure. I’ve had some excellent continuing help from BeatSlaughter in designing the layout and style of what you see before you. There’s still a lot of work to go to unlease some features I’ve been setting up – I’ll keep you updated. Critically I’ve yet to set up an e-commerce section for the FLACs, so for now you can still visit the old shop and puchase there.

So bookmark this site, and subscribe to the new feeds! Much more to come!

In the mad rush of things going on at the moment Iain reminds me that we’ve a gig on that I’ve forgotten about! This was last Wednesday the 24th, leaving only two days to get ready for the Armidale Club’s open mic night on the Friday the 26th! Holy smoke, I though it was going to be a month later! Nevermind I thought, been practising for a while now with Iain, so we won’t do too bad.

The evening was opened by Ed Campbell’s 299′s project throwing some laptop driven pop to ears that may not have experienced such a thing before. He had some fine moments during quiet sections and the electronic vibe paved the way nicely for Iain and I to go on second. Our project name has moved onto ‘Solsonic’ and operating as a prog-dance duo. Here are some in-the-heat-of-the-moment-photos thanks to R:

I think we played for around 40 minutes but it was hard to tell due to being caught up in the whirlwind of the sound and performance. Overall we achieve our goal very well, to play progressive improvised loop-based music with a sense of fun, groove, melodic engagement and characterised entertainment. Of course, many minor slips occurred, and things can ALWAYS be improved upon, but the overall energy was right on for the aim. And it was fun to do! That seldom could be said of playing live, as there are so many ways it all can go wrong. I left the gig feeling that something small but important was achieved, and that Iain and I can now build upon the live idea with confidence.

The 50 odd people were generous with attention and applause – no heckling or looks of utter confusion could be detected. Assorted audients came up and gave thanks after the show, which is nice to hear from people you do not know, or from people who are not directly ‘there to support the project’. One particularly satisfying encounter was with a Zia from Wytaliba who invited us to play live for a fund raising gig for the Stockwood Festival during late November. To be asked to do this is a big honour, and I’ve long wished to play live there one day. Looks like there is much rehearsing and refinement to go!