So first a little housekeeping. Sorry I’ve been a little lax on posting things here. Been busy and, besides, microblogging (see Twitter feed) is more up my alley (haiku is my favorite poetry form). On the subject of music, which this post will concern itself with, I should point out a few things:
- My radio show isn’t dead, just been busy. That, and I’m waiting on Mixxx to fix the bug with my microphone so I can use voice over. But that’s really an excuse. I’ve been planning on doing another show, for weeks. So I have lots of fodder for it. Also been thinking about doing a noise show.
- This year, my friend Jon 7 aka President Blair who runs the Timetheory netlabel and subsequently released my first noise album as Brownian Motion, started a project called The ERNIE 4 and played a couple local shows. In the spirit of Future Sound Of London’s “ISDN,” we did a little “tour” via Icecast. As the year is drawing to a close, we should be releasing the archives of this year’s tour soon. Keep an eye out.
- Also keep an eye out for the second Brownian Motion, More Culture Than A Pint Of Probiotics, soon to come from Bleak netlabel.
- The biggest show The ERNIE 4 had the delight in playing was with noisers from across the country at the 2011 Eugene Noise Fest. It was a lot of fun and we had an opportunity to test out some new equipment which worked out really well. We released the rather short set for free which you can find here.
On that latter point, I had finally decided to put Linux on my G4 Mac. It worked, but I wasn’t totally satisfied. After mucking around with it quite a bit, I realized how I could make an old Thinkpad R60 do the trick. Merely days before. I got Lubuntu, JACK, Pure Data, JACK-Rack, Patchage, and a bunch of LADSPA plugins set up. I brought a contact mic along for fun. The flexibility it offered, especially via Jack, was awesome. Best of all, Patchage made virtual cabling super easy. I was able to run multiple inputs any which way I want. Through this process, I got Jon interested in pd and he used it, too.
The more I contemplated this the more excited I got: I had a completely free system. By this I mean not that I got the computer without cost (this is not about money), but that my entire set up, down to the operating system, was entirely open source. Free for anyone to investigate, distribute and modify. Why is this important?
There’s a reason why I’m so adamant about Creative Commons licensing with my work (including my radio show). It’s the same reason why I’m so adamant about using freeware. I don’t believe information should be “owned.” It’s like Monsanto trying to patent DNA. There is only one goal from this– greed. Music should be about your passion to make it. Not greed. If you want to be greedy, go be an investment banker. I do believe that artists deserve recognition for their works and I do believe that artists have the right to profit from their works, even make lots of money from them. When you make it only about profit, however, then you are, in my opinion, not art, you are simply another commercial juggernaut. Go make jingles for McDonald’s.
There is that phrase: if you love something, set it free.
Meanwhile, I became a member of Hal McGee‘s Contact Group of Homemade Experimental Electronic Music and Noise on Facebook. I missed an option to add a track to his recent compilation series of 60 second tracks. In the process of discussing this and lamenting that there were some missed opportunities, it was brought up that the group was about the free change of ideas, not about the compilation. The gauntlet was thrown down.
So I picked it up and offered an idea of my own: a free electronics compilation. Made with free software, distributed in a free format, with a free license, offered through a free host, and released for free. By all of those except the latter, I meant free as in speech, not beer (i.e. not about money). This led to some lively discussion and ultimately some decisions were made:
- Contributions are open. Anyone, Contact Group member or not, can contribute.
- There are no limits on genre or genres. Doesn’t just have to be noise.
- There are no limits on time. Doesn’t have to be 60 seconds. It can be. Doesn’t have to.
- Deadline is
January 1. February 1. - Release will be offered through Bandcamp (technically not free, but their API is freely available). Reason is that we can offer it for “name your own price”which means it’s free as in beer if you want it to be, but if you want to contribute, great. The money will be equally split between all the software projects used.
- More specifically, it will be released on my own Bandcamp page under the “Brownian eMotions” label. Cuz it’s funny.
- Must use free software.
- Must use a free format. MP3 is not free and, besides, we need lossless to make Bandcamp work. I highly recommend FLAC because it is free and lossless and compressed, which makes distribution easier. Other alternatives are WAV and AIFF, but they were originally proprietary formats developed by IBM/Microsoft and Apple, respectively. In general, these should not have licenses or patents, but there are some patents on some extensions, so it may be difficult to be certain that you’re using a free version. FLAC is definitively free.
- Contributions can be made available any which way you want: file sharing services, email, etc. Leave a comment here with how you’d like to do it and I’ll email you back with the necessary information.
- Remember, this is free as in speech. Open source. We’re not talking about price. If you stole Fruityloops off of some Torrent site, that’s not the free we’re talking about.
- It is highly preferable, but not necessary, to use a free operating system. Windows and OS X are not free.
- Also preferable, but not necessary, is the use of open source hardware. If you want to use your guitar, go for it. But if you want to make an electronics project out of this, knock yourself out.
- For many people, this will be a dramatic change. It’s meant to challenge you. Try something new. I WILL be happy to answer technical questions.
- All tracks will be licensed with a by-nc-sa license which allows users to remix and share the track given that re-use or re-distribution is non-commercial, that the original is attributed, and that the new work or distribution is similarly licensed.
That being said, we already have some takers. As I hear from more people I will add them to this list. Here goes:
- Travis Johnson (track received)
Jack HertzNuno Maltez- Ronny Wærnes (track received)
- Post-Avantist (track received)
Herv- Halluciphile (track received)
Antiquematter- President Blair (track received)
- The Cheshire Dragon (track received)
Centrescape
- Ganglion Cyst (track received)
- Hobo Liked Gnomix (track received)
- hiyohiyoipseniyo (track received)
- Astrometria (track received)
- Hollywood Video Game Kill-Bot (track received)
- d0x10 (track received)
LackthrowRJ Myato
- I Died (track received)
- John Dunlap (track received)
- Nick Bailey (track received)
- Elizabeth Veldon (track received)
- Pulsewidth (track received)
- Carl Kruger (track received)
- Somnaphon (track received)
- The Implicit Order (track received)
- Shaun Sandor (track received)
- Marax (track received)
- The Last Thing I Said To You Was (track received)
- Loopool (track received)
- noish (track received)
- Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (track received)
- Arvo Zylo (track received)
- Brownian Motion (track received)
- The ERNIE 4 (track received)
Precocious Mouse
So get out there, make some noise, and spread the word. Bonus points if your piece is on the subject of freedom 🙂
P.S. This post has been done by email so if it sucks, blame WordPress. 🙂
Update 29 December 2011: make sure to read the comments for some further clarifications.
Update 2 February 2012: A few loose ends left in bold. Revised to include all previous candidate contributors. I struckout the ones who either I lost contact with or who said that for whatever reason they couldn’t contribute. This is mostly for my own desire to document. There may be a volume 2 and 3… Meanwhile, expect this out relatively soon. I’m aiming for mid-February, probably consistent with the release of the new Brownian Motion.
Update 14 Febuary 2012: Come get it!
December 29, 2011 at 12:16 am
I was asked about a Tascam digital field recorder and I’m thinking the embedded software is not open. However, I don’t want this comp to be all about the rules. it’s also about the experience– the hurdles– and feeding that back to the open source software community to give them fodder for development.
That being said, if you have a similar situation, I think the comp is also about getting out of your comfort zone, so I’d encourage you to experiment and find perhaps new ways of doing things. Don’t make it frustrating for yourself, though. I’d like to see the end result be the further exploration of open source software, not the entire discrediting of it!
I am reminded of one last thing: make notes about what software you used and what your experience was. It would be most appreciated. Do include the parts that weren’t free, if you could. Thanks!
January 1, 2012 at 7:31 am
Hi, I’d really like to contribute to this project but I am not sure how I can contact you other than leaving a comment…
January 1, 2012 at 9:53 pm
this is a perfectly good means of doing it. i’ll drop you an email!
January 3, 2012 at 9:37 pm
Another piece of clarification: I should carefully describe that “free and open source” necessarily means not proprietarily licensed. Extremely restrictive copyrights are the very anthithesis of FLOSS and this compilation.
A great example of this: VSTs. Sure, the plugin protocol is ubiquitous. There are actually many freeware and/or open source VST plugins and hosts out there for all sorts of platforms.
That seems all fine and dandy but the VST software development kit is proprietarily licensed. Put more bluntly, Steinberg pisses all over it and calls it theirs. And you better not mess with it unless they say it’s ok.
You might think, well, hey, it’s their crap, they can do with it what they want. Sure, they can. But there are plenty of great developers out there who will license their work in such a way that they are credited, but distribution and re-work is open to anyone.
This kind of leaves open the door to development and progress on a worldwide scale. That’s a good thing and if it’s not obvious, consider Linux. A whole operating system, free. Imagine.
(As an aside, this compilation is certainly pro-Linux because it’s the only major OS that is free but it is NOT about Linux. No Linux required. Got it?)
Anyways so you have these freely licensed VST programs that are made of non-free components. Obviously freedom is 100% free or it’s not freedom. So this does not fit in with the rules of the compilation.
I would suggest that you look for a couple things. Number one, check your software’s license. Everything has a license. It might have a public domain license, but it’s got a license. It will stipulate what the rules are. If the source is open and distribution is open and re-work is ok, then you’re probably fine. Here‘s a list to help you figure out if you have a good one. Then, double check that the source code is there. You don’t have to understand it. It just has to be there, publicly available.
January 7, 2012 at 6:22 pm
Not a requirement, but you may want to check out the Open Source Noise group on Facebook.
Also, as an aside, you might get some good ideas/inspirations from the Free Software Series curated by Mattin.
January 8, 2012 at 11:51 am
Glad to run into another PD user – I can show you a little Super Collider if you’re interested.
Are you still looking for submissions for the comp?
January 8, 2012 at 12:27 pm
actually in the process of working on this comp i’ve come across all sorts of live coding solutions, including super collider. when i find some time 🙂 i plan on exploring them all. meanwhile, if you’ve got super collider code to share, by all means do! that would make it a lot easier to figure out 🙂
meanwhile, i will take submissions until feb 1 as you see above. given the digital nature of the comp, i see no reason to limit it to some specific number or length. so go for it!
honestly, i would really love a free jazz piece 🙂
i’ll send you an email and we can chat about this more…
January 29, 2012 at 10:05 am
here’s my first effort –> http://www.sendspace.com/file/vff9pm
used Newtonator LV2 and Audacity, and a couple of free samples and my OS is Debian unstable, more noise than jazz, jazz noise mmm intriguing that.
January 29, 2012 at 3:02 pm
holy crap, nick. LOVE it. thanks man!!!
December 4, 2015 at 4:43 am
Hello, the whole thing is going sound here and ofcourse every one is sharing information, that’s truly fine, keep up
writing.
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