Screencast 4: Uh...

From Vimeo.com

Michael tries to turn off his computer.

(Music - Song Of Technology / Majectical Electical)

Cast: Michael Forrest

More Comics

I've uploaded a few more comics from my little pad. I was going to release these over time but it seems I'm now on a completely new mission so I might as well put these up in one go.

They're all fairly personal, but hopefully that means there's a chance I'll connect with something in you that nobody else was specific about before.


Chess / Cousin
I Ching
Worlds / Another Saturday Night

Screencast 3: The Grimonium Set

From Vimeo.com

High quality version: box.net/shared/static/ot7j0nfdkt.mov

This screencast is about how I have programmed my Korg MicroKontrol to reassign controls dynamically during a set when switching between songs. You can see a glimpse of my on-screen interface, and details of the XML implementation. I also talk briefly about the problems with the Jazzmutant Lemur.

The (very much pre-alpha) version of the Grimonium is available here: processing.grimaceworks.com/grimonium

Cast: Michael Forrest

Screencast 2: Grimonium powered Animata

From Vimeo.com

Clearer Quicktime version here: box.net/shared/static/x4qq3q1p1c.mov

This example shows how I'm using Animata with Ableton Live, Reason and Processing. Hope you like it.

Grimonium is here: processing.grimaceworks.com/grimonium (you might want to grab the source from GitHub and do a bit of hacking since it's not exactly consumer-ready yet..!)

Couple of notes:

I get confused around 11:46 - to clarify:
Live transmits MIDI note data on on IAC Bus 1. This MIDI data is then received by BOTH Reason AND Processing. Thus Reason can respond audibly and Processing can convert (based on the content of mappings.xml file) the MIDI to OSC data for Animata.

The keen-eyed among you might have noticed that I triangulated the drummer's arms in the wrong order. These need to be reset and done with the snare hand first, and the the hi-hat hand, so that they layer up properly.

Cast: Michael Forrest

Screencast 1: Grimonium AutoAccompaniment

From Vimeo.com

Quicktime version: box.net/shared/static/k5kjkccxps.mov

Here is my first screencast using ScreenFlow. I want to introduce some aspects of the Processing-based live performance routing tool I'm making.

This first one is just a sort of demo of how to do a weird autoaccompaniment thing. Might seem a bit overcomplicated in some ways but it's just one tiny piece of the puzzle...

processing.grimaceworks.com/grimonium

Cast: Michael Forrest

Homebrew Adventures

Scroll to the end to see the two videos (I got onto a little bit of a ramble with my explanations) :-)

I have a lot of admiration for Raymond Scott. He created his own instruments and he played them well.

Raymond Scott lived in times of hardware. We live in times of software. Software is where I see the most potential for innovation and creativity. Ada Lovelace got it right in 1852 when she "acknowledged some possibilities of the machine which [Charles] Babbage never published, such as speculating that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

For years I have worked to gain mastery over the world of music software. I started with the Amiga on MED (getting an Amiga was the sole purpose I had with getting a job as young as I possibly could - paper rounds before and after school almost every day from when I was 13 years old). A few years later and Iwas using PCs and Cubase. I sold my hardware synth (to get a cello) when software synths started becoming viable. I started using Ableton Live from the moment I heard about it - initially sucked in by the realtime time-stretching and kept on it since being able to work with video the same way I've always worked with audio (see my Watchmen Trailer Remix for the most insane project I've tried recently). And let's not forget Propellerhead Reason, and the glory of Rewire. Having had training in classical instruments, I am a great believer in learning how to play my instruments. Ironically enough, the better I get with software, the less good I have to be with classical instruments... (my trumpet teacher would be so un-proud).

Sometimes the software you can buy isn't enough. I spent a few years playing in bands and always wanted to use samples to bring some more life into the sound. But it always felt so disembodied and strange to have sounds coming from nowhere when it was obvious what was coming from the guitars or drums. So I conceived this idea of a 'virtual band'. This would give form to the weird and wonderful sounds possible through audio synthesis and processing, and could inject a lot of interest into live performances. Over the years I have tried to realise this vision in many different ways. I've created models with Poser and 3DS Max, I've written MIDI responsive software in Director, I've made sample players in Flash, but there was always too much latency, or 3D modelling, or rendering or... well ... non-realtime problems, and I always ended up putting the idea on the back burner. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Create Digital Motion blogged about Animata. An open source animation tool with a really simple concept at its core, and the ability to do exactly what I've wanted to do all these years, with a fast workflow, flexibly, and in realtime. So I got to work.

I'd already used Max/MSP for a project but found it incredibly unwieldy when arrays were necessary. I've attempted to use Processing for a complex commercial project and learned that doing everything within Processing can lead to a lot of problems. I've used the Processing libraries in pure Java but found this was too much of a sacrifice in terms of sharing code and exporting applications. So this time I decided to make libraries for Processing with a bit of scripting to bind little projects together within the Processing IDE. So I built a library for the Korg MicroKontrol (and have some others underway), I got the source code for Animata to compile so I could make changes, I did some drawings, I pulled out some of the ideas I'd had earlier in the year for visuals, and I slapped it all together to make what you see in the videos below.

Turns out something that seemed quite simple in my head is gargantuan in terms of implementation complexity, but - well - here it is. Working.


VIDEO 1: Software Tour - overview of the sort of stuff I've been doing. It's kinda blurry but I think that's better than 'kinda takes forever to load' like the first version I uploaded (here, if you're very patient and have a massive screen)

Homebrew Adventures from Michael Forrest on Vimeo.

VIDEO 2: Demo:

Homebrew Adventures - demo from Michael Forrest on Vimeo.

Yeah. So my 'tribute' to my heroes comes across somewhat creepy doesn't it... But hey. It was just a quick job to wire everything out so next week I'll try something else :) Hope you got something from that anyway.


HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Homebrew Adventures - demo

From Vimeo.com

See blog post: grimaceworks.com/blog/296_Homebrew+Adventures

Cast: Michael Forrest

Santa says HAVE A HAPPY XMAS!!

From Vimeo.com

Cast: Michael Forrest

Ad Lib 1

stupid ad lib now I've created my new hi-tech medium. hi-tech/lo-tech ftw.

Here's the Processing code: http://pastie.org/342257

Bits of the Watchmen Trailer remix

I left out some of the good bits I did for http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zs5Ip9o-gJ0 so here they are served up in less musicky form - enjoy

Watchmen - Michael Forrest Trailer Remix

I thought I'd try to make a piece of music using only the video and audio from the latest Watchmen trailer. I tried to prolong all the best bits in the process :)

Hope you enjoy. More of this sort of thing at grimaceworks.com/videos

Making of a Video Composition

http://grimaceworks.com

This is me seeing how much order I can extract from chaos - I wanted to get some insanely raw footage and turn it into something musically appealing. Also important in this edit was to make sure the girls looked nice at all times, and that there wasn't too much of my ugly mug in it :)

The drum preset Elena plays at the start is the funnest drum preset known to man - it's like a jazz thing - the bassline walks with the kick pedal and there are vibes and trumpet stabs on the cymbals.

Notice that I don't really have anywhere good to store my bike, hence its frequent appearance. The same goes for my air conditioning unit.

I thought I'd do the edits in the way Lars Von Trier says to do them in documentaries - edits always flagged by fading through black. The music is diegetic, to say the least! I liked the idea of doing this to contrast with the pace of the editing creating the hyper-reality (verging on total fiction) of the finished cut.

I've uploaded the result of this experiment before, making me regret saying 'grimaceworks presents'. Also, apologies for some inconsistent sentence / title case in the first couple of captions.

When I was more excited about this, I imagined doing a series of them, with different girls each time. But then.. I suppose I do tend to get carried away... Happy for any volunteers though - if you want me to make it look like you're an amazing musician :) (Elena kept getting people asking her to join their band after they saw the drumming in this :-s )

I have edited out most of the bits where I make suggestions as I can't stand to listen to myself. I have also edited out a couple of times where I say "uh.. that's terrible"... As well as all the times I said "that's brilliant!", of course....

Episode 1: Cousin

Programming Love: ActionScript

Yesterday I rediscovered a doc I wrote for LBi and placed on our open source page. You know, I'm rather proud of it :)

If you're remotely interested in Flash development then please go and have a read: LBi ActionScript Project Structure.pdf. I think you will be both inspired and entertained.

Grimaceworks.com on iPod Touch / iPhone

Just thought I'd mention that my new website has been tested on my iPod Touch. I wanted to point out that all the media works - you can listen to any mp3s and watch any videos thanks to the way I've done the Flash fallback content. So if you want to check my stuff out then you don't necessarily have to be at your computer!

Geoff Tyson - Here Again.mp3

This is the second track I’ve done with Geoff Tyson. Geoff has his own Wikipedia entry because he was a student and jamming-buddy of guitar hero Joe Satriani. He also features on one of the Guitar Hero games. He knows how to put a song together too, so it was nice to work on this stuff – I have been able to focus on sonic experimentation instead of boring stuff like pitch and timing correction! This one is pretty intense. Hoping to do something a bit more restrained for our third effort.

Boomshine

Ric Moore of bedroomlab.com just put up this game to play online. I gave him the music and sound effects.



If you get stuck on the higher levels just make your window smaller and reload. Then it will be easier :)

Play it!

Don't Let Me Down.mp3

Here’s something that I’ve been working on with Fátima Eiras over the Internet. Fátima is supporting the Ting Tings in Madrid next week as “Fatima Meets Kuriaki”. So she’s gonna be famous very soon.

Days 1..300

Clicking through old posts via my 'random posts' widget I saw my entry "Day 1", dated 25th February 2008. This was Day One of my attempt to start carving some success as a musician or artist of some sort. This site shows how far I am with that.

I thought I'd find out how many days I am into my project now. Date.today - "25 Feb 2008".to_date Today is Day 260. A round number. Not as round as, say, one hundred though.


>> day1 = "25 Feb 2008".to_date
=> Mon, 25 Feb 2008
>> day1 + 100
=> Wed, 04 Jun 2008

4th June 2008: my 30th birthday. I got a surprise party! Just like I always wanted! And this:



Day 101 involved me losing my best friend, most promising musical collaboration and the path I'd decided to take towards achieving musical success without having to be lonely. A laptop was destroyed in the process. I'm still somewhat less-than-chuffed about that whole development.

Let's fast-forward to Day 200. Friday 12th September. No - let's go to Day 210 - that's when I decided I wasn't capable of being in the foreground, artistically, and started pursuing the more pragmatic and realistic aim of focusing on production. More geeky, less fraught. Along I go.

Day three hundred will be the 21st December. I thought I was going to have a million pounds by about day three hundred. That would have been three thousand three hundred and thirty three pounds a day. I suppose that's something of a high expectation to have of myself. Suffice to say I'm a long way off. And, well, now I need to get twenty five thousand pounds a day to meet by goal by day three hundred.

Anyway, if it wasn't obvious, I spend too much of my time looking inwards. I think I shall step out of my comfort zone and make a phone call.

Not 'art': experiments.

It dawned on me that the word 'art' in the primary navigation of my new website was a word put in my mouth by other people. It hasn't been sitting right with me at all, beyond being a conveniently short catch-all word for my creative pursuits.

'Experiments' is a term that captures much more precisely the nature of the work I have placed here. Everything you will find is experimental on some level - be it an attempt to push my own boundaries, or the boundaries of music in general. Less obvious are the experiments where I have developed a process - usually geared around creating work extremely rapidly. I get bored if any remotely subjective project takes me longer than a day or two to create. So, while you may have seen the sort of fast cutting and micro-manipulation that is present in a few of my YouTube videos done before by others, I have replaced their painstaking approach with a loose, fast, easy approach of my own, allowing me to throw stuff together very quickly. Where possible I will use the edge features of new software, but to be sure, I often prefer to program my own tools.

While a lot of what I have done might perhaps be considered 'art' by others (I'd like to hope so anyway), as far as I'm concerned, these are technical experiments or creative attempts to achieve certain emotinal effects, created quickly by delegating as much monkey-work to the computer as possible.

New Website

I have revamped my website! It's less of a blog and more of a fully-formed showcase site now.



There's a feedback widget to the left you can use to control where I focus my efforts from now on.. Hope you like it!

Uh, yeah, thanks Last.fm

I'll be retiring on these royalties then.

Production page

Okay, here's a showcase of some of my best stuff in an attempt to bring it all together in a place a busy person can check it out...

grimaceworks.com/mf/production

Mood Tracker again

Seems my Facebook app has been quietly gaining users.

From people all over the place. The last mark is zero because the data doesn't get changed until midnight. I couldn't work out how to narrow the range - the flash kept freezing!
I'm staying with my family today, and somebody reminded me I know celebrity psychologist Paul Britton, and that perhaps I should be talking to him and other people about this application. And perhaps I could somehow monetise it.
I have no idea how I would monetise it.

Radiohead Reckoner Remix

So I spent this afternoon surrounded by a circle of gear, recording this remix, after Dave kindly donated the 'stems' (they must always be referred to as 'stems', with the quote marks).

I didn't want to go too electronic on it - I decided I wanted to do something that wouldn't be too out of place on a Radiohead record. It was nice sitting inside a circle formed by my drum kit, rack units, microphone assembly, moog prodigy, cello, trumpet, clarinet, controller keyboard and laptop. The only bad thing is it meant I was listening to my speakers at the wrong angle, meaning I was mixing it slightly wrong as I was going along - hopefully it's not TOO bad, now that I've tweaked it.

There was a lot of music spilling into the vocal track, so I ended up incorporating this into a fill, bringing in the 'big' music. Oh anyway. Have a listen.



Listen here and vote for it: http://www.radioheadremix.com/remix/?id=868

What Art Is, To Me

This is my first ever comic. I think it explains a few things anyway.


What Art Is, To Me

Geoff Tyson - Polyrhythms - Michael Forrest Remix

Geoff sent me the vocals to do some music under. When I think polyrhythmic, this is what I imagine.

L1NA Listeners

I've been tracking the number of listeners reported by Last.fm (see last.fm/music/L1NA). Here's how it's been looking.



MF is Michael Forrest on Last.fm.

(L1NA is the project I was doing with Halina that we sadly had to abandon)

I suspect hope subsequent collaborations will perform similarly. Well - should be better really - this, I think, is just bubbling viral spreading without any marketing.

Michael Jackson vs Eurythmics vs Michael Forrest

A day's work. Creating some DJ toolage now that I'm not an artist any more. I wish I could sing like Michael Jackson...

Mischief