Anologue Deconstructionism

A serious question: What if all the instruments disappeared?  If you balk at that, let me assure you, they are evolving so rapidly that you should take this seriously.  The instruments could 

very well change so much, so quickly, that it would seem like they’d just up and vanished.  How, you ask?  Glad I have your attention, because this is real, very serious, and happening quicker then most of us realize.

            The first major change is obvious and has been going on for some time now, and that of course is the synthesizer.  Though some might place this revolution in the 60s, we also might venture that the first instruments were human powered synths.  What you may not know about them now is how drastically their analog interfacing has changed. 

In 1999 Korg gave us the Kaoss Pad, a nifty little device that was practically unusable save for genius sound effects wizards, such as Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead (circa Kid A).  Even now with newer versions, few artists dare to attempt the intrepid X & Y axis touch control in favor of their older instruments.  Little did we know, that these were all foreshadowing a new way to create music. 

Now, some nostalgia from the mid-90s:  When I got my chaos pad back in an old high school band, the thing cost around $300.  It was a small box roughly the size of dvd player, but with a glowing neon-orange touch screen.  One uses the Kaoss pad like a guitar player does with a foot effects pedal, only with your hands; this made it easiest for keyboard players and DJs to use.  I thought then, and still believe today, that it had a practical use for every instrument, even trying to run it through my guitar pedal & work the touch screen with my toes.  I even got kicked out of a couple bands for this unorthodox playing style.  It was too strange and alienating to most other band members.  For the time, I would quietly sit brooding in my room, playing my They Might Be Giants, Radiohead & NIN nodding knowingly.

Fast forward to a wonderful reincarnation of a pretty machine, the Korg MS-10 (20), & on November 2008 its debut on the Nintendo DS as Korg DS-10 Synthesizer.  Okay, okay I know what you’re thinking.  All that build-up for a video game?  That’s silly!  Well, let me break down why a little $30 portable game card is more capable then a state of the art analog synth studio and why if you’re a musician that uses synthesizers, this is imperative to your time & money.

 

In one tiny DS-10 game cartridge you get the equivalent of :

§         2 analog synthesizer emulators

§         2 Voltage-controlled Duel-Oscillators (patchable)

o       sawtooth, pulse, triangle, & noise waveform

§         4 part drum machine

§         Full virtual synth analog controls

§         LFO

§         Envelope generator

§         VCO2

§         Chorus, flanger & delay parameters

§         2 Octave touch keyboard

§         Imitation analog patching (yes, you can literally plug in cords still!)

§         3 Kaoss pads for each synth part, FULLY customizable

§         6 track, 16-step Sequencer

§         Note Matrix

§         Sync up to 8 Korg DS-10 over Nintendo wi-fi for orchestration

For those who need it in other terms, monetarily speaking, all of the equipment arranged as bulky analog synthesizers, mixing boards, etc. would easily cost 10s of 1000s of dollars (the 8 Korg DS analog setup costing well over 100k, roughly $1280 with Nintendo DSs).  The Korg DS-10 costs less then the cords to hook the Kaoss pad up to your keyboard, let alone a studio’s worth of equipment.  If anyone out there wants to add up just how much all that equipment would be, I would love to see it!  Its even more to go analog when you consider a lot of the desired synths are now post-modern antiques, a mint condition synthesizer going for sometimes thousands more then its original price, just because it squawks a certain way.

More advanced still, in the underground scene, from homebrew enthusiasts, we get Nitrotracker, capable of most of what the DS-10 is, plus and minus a few features.  Nitrotracker’s real advantage is a more technical integration of music sequencing & a sampler that uses the already built in Nintendo microphone.  Portable composition is now a real possibility.

But this is still peanuts people.  And if you’ve followed me this far, here is the reward: These software applications still utilize a pseudo-analogue setup to translate the sound parameters into graphics.  What is odd is just how much of it is all still listing of words on buttons.  Korg DS-10 is especially guilty of no creative talent whatsoever when it comes to graphics, yet the utilitarian functionality has to be appreciated.  Still, one yearns for an easier to use, perhaps customizable interface.  This is where the real madness begins.  The artists out there are begging to realize that a music program need not necessarily imitate the analog instrument, that instead sound could be produced from anything.

What is strange is that the gaming industry, as well as the music industry, are both scared to death of this new approach that redefines what an instrument can look like virtually.  You’d think they’d embrace it as new possible revenue at the very least.  Leave it to amateur programmer students & inspired professors at MIT to hit the next big thing, yet have little to no idea of how to properly produce it.  Using the software designing program Scratch, these inspired designers have made several musically driven games that allow things such as rearrangement of the keyboard, or playing a song by bouncing balls.  Both, Bouncing Music Balls & Piano Machine are featured demonstrations that come with the free software, which can be openly edited.  Essentially, we can now make virtual instruments look however we want them to, even on the amateur programming level.  Oddly enough, any programmer could design software like this, but I have yet to come across any others.  (Please write me if you find any more.)

We stand at the dawn of a new era in music production & the most state of the art technology we have is innocently in the hands of gamers & children across the globe. The final incredible thing we do to this equation is to reapply the touch screen concept to the new music programming.  The Nintendo DS and the IPhone are the most familiar touch based systems & fair well (though both scream for more creativity software apps!).  I’d like to introduce you to the classic if you haven’t already used one, and that is the Wacom drawing tablet.  If you think you know touch-screen and haven’t used a Wacom, its time for a reality check.  The Wacom tablet has more pressure sensitivity then a pencil’s physics allow.  That’s right, it’s the most accurate analog to digital pressure sensitivity available & for the time being, mostly only artists use it to draw.  Enter the Cintiq series, an actual touch-based high definition screen.  No longer do we have to match analog pen and tablet to the screen, for they are one.  Somewhere out there, there very well could be at this moment, a genius artist designing his or her own touch-based music application, rearranging new virtual instruments, rendering them anyway they please & then playing a new, unseen, instrument of creative hyperspacial reality.

That’s it, we made it!  The hybrid of analog and digital is the touch-screen & its taking over the world!  I expect we'll have floating virtual glyphs soon enough.  If Guitar Hero or Rock Band is any indication, just imagine how much better it could get.  As opposed to matching times to glowing dots, one could be learning the instruments of the future.  Instead of learning to play a piano, one could simply load up a software application that produced the right notes on the screen, at the right time, and didn’t even show you the wrong notes, let alone allow you to play them.  Of course this makes a lot of the old analog skill useless, but one must wonder just how good a musician raised by software can be.  One could take a drum set and scale it to the size of their fingertips, playing songs by taping them out.  One could use multiple Wacom pens as drumsticks.  A drummer could become a classical violinist simply by making a virtual drum kit that corresponded to the notes, fully customizable.  The possibilities are truly endless.

The real question is, in the future, will we be able to tell the difference between video games and instruments?

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Les Claypool - Of Fungi and Foe

-Insert random weirdness here-

Misattributing a quote to Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, actually from J. B. S. Haldane, Terrence McKenna once said in a lecture on fungi, “Not only is reality stranger then we suppose, it's stranger then we can suppose.”  Les Claypool is here to remind us how strange life truly is!  Smelting together folk sense with rocking bass lines, yokel slang with scientific theory & a love of the bizarre with real-life fables, Of Fungi and Foe is not an album to be taken lightly, yet still retains its fun with an alien sense of humor.

The reason I bring up the aforementioned scientists and philosophers is because one gets a sense from the lyrics that this is exactly where Les is coming from.  He is heavily weighing the nutrients and poisons of life as well as their social ramifications, and beyond to a sense of the eternal.  Stories of mass abuse of chemicals on all levels within the songs –from cocaine abuse, to being addicted to a political agenda- narrow focus to individual examples of an array of different drug addicts and their subsequent lifestyles.  Surviving some 30 years in music industry, Claypool has lessons for all the culturally maligned, examples of tragic karma coming back to balance life.  From his point of view, anything could become a manifest desire, could ruin entire lives with this sort of social cultism.  The philosophical points of view expressed in the album are complex to say the least & offer evidence for their relevance amidst silly reverence, ranting & craziness.

Add all this wisdom to his deal to compose several songs on the Wii game title Mushroom Men and instead of getting a bunch of thematic mush, like with most game soundtracks, Les Claypool produced thoughtful, somewhat controversial, yet realistic songs that not only fit the context and setting of the game, but now extended onto the new album is comprehensive & a whole other world to explore.  A sort of darker and more satirical They Might Be Giants vibe is to be found in this new record, with a splash of Frank Zappa’s allegorical madness.  Songs like “Kazoo” and “What Would Sir George Martin Do” are the more fun songs, doing well to balance the serious messages. 

Then we delve into a sort of hybrid, where it’s obvious that Les has something serious to say, but needs to cloak the message somewhat.  “Primed by 29” is a good example, with a rousing melody to sing to, one soon realizes that from the wordless freeform bass scat (which is sweet!), that they’re singing along to some of the lyrics between verse and chorus that are stark reminders meant to speak to those caught in hopeless patterns of self abuse. Lyrics like “damn that’s some shitty wine…but fill my glass another time, I’m sure it’ll begin to taste fine, just fine” sound like the emulated words of an enabler, once cheering on intoxication, now observing it with and ironic sense of pain and tragedy from life.  These songs are some sort of spring trap to anyone feeling any sense of guilt about these overindulgences.  All along to childlike xylophone, funky guitar & a great beat; a wonderful disguise for an important message that is very hard to hear for most.

In Pretty Little Song Claypool makes a list of the little nagging things that destroy us slowly & puts it to warped out bass with bizarre synth. Singing “As the stones are moving through your kidneys, sing a little song”  we get chilling real life reminders.  By this point it is no longer silly, but scary.  A sort of Twilight Zone eeriness fills the mind as one starts counting original sins and aches & pains.  This is not pleasant.  But, it is unpleasant in a much needed way, in a way comparable to Radiohead’s “Kid A.”  These things, though nagging problems, may one day, as much as anything else, be the end of us and deserve our attention.  It is much easier to ignore these things, but we must be as brave as the doctors out there seeking cures, and we must be brave enough to take care of ourselves.  “Ol’ Rosco” is a reverent slang tale of drinkin’ and drivin’ that echoes this same sentiment, only from an outside, perhaps elderly perspective.  One could picture Les in a rocking-chair out on his front porch telling the story to a group of youngins to warn them of the dangers, or gossiping with relatives about how Rosco “do’s as he damn well pleases!”  The bass at face value alone is a reminder of how both are telling the story.  Short staccato phrases of perfectly syncopated lines create an atmosphere for tales like no other.  This is also why it’s easier to overlook Claypool’s sort of sing-talk style.  His voice is so descriptive and dramatic that it is for him another tool besides his singing, rather then an inability.  However, when he does sing, its great to hear a true bass!  His bellows of deep lore are quite effective at getting across his message.  The way he imitates a sort of good-ole-boy attitude & hick accent make the story all that more authentic.

                The culmination of this collection of tales, one is take by surprise when they begin to discern an actual antagonist and protagonist.  It is at the end of the album one realizes it was a folk device all along, all the tales interconnecting in ways similar to Bob Dylan in ’65 such as the characters in “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” or “Desolation Row.”  There is a menagerie of characters living through Of Fungi and Foe.  It is clear that the hero here takes the place of “friend” in the famous saying, as the Fungi.  The villain is, or are, all the poisonous parts of life, be it chemical, social, psychological or even political, not matter how good something is, even his own music, there is a point to it that is unhealthy.

                Of Fungi and Foe sucks about 60% less then most Primus albums, but that isn’t any reason not to go out & get it.  Les Claypool, though eccentric and sometimes silly, is ultimately a sage in fool’s clothing.  He sets a high standard for near experimental, technical instrumental music on the cutting edge, and matches it with esoteric lyrics that somehow manage to reach from the ends of the universe to pull it back to earth and speak it in hillbilly slang, or Cali hippy, or alien scat bass solos.  Claypool seems to be hinting at his own evolution, and a cultural revolution of genetic understanding.  The cover art especially seems to link the archaic references… but I have to wonder just what it represents.  Are these missing links we see on the cover?  Why does one dude have a spider on his head?  Perhaps Les and the artist giggle over its true meaning.  There are just as many answers offered here as unnerving questions rose about what we consider to be normal.  None of this music is normal and that is what’s most wonderful about it.  At this level Claypool is creatively free to explore acting, writing, music or whatever he wants (some of his far-out voices would make wonderful cartoon voiceovers) and we can only hope that he will continue to produce more oddities such as Of Fungi and Foe. 

-(cue slide-whistle & creeping bass-

Les Claypool - Of Fungi and Foe

2009 Prawn Song

Les Claypool