I did a quick interview with Mike for Amiga Web, a few questions on retro computing, and a mention of me smashing my Amiga. The memories...

There's also a link to some of my earlier music, in module format.

I keep forgetting, some of my tracker music is actually available here and there in the tubes. I still have all of it stored in my digital vaults. One fine day I should find time to collect and somehow present my pre-2000 music.

"Virtual musicians are already real, and they’re only getting realer."

Wired describes Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF).

The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."

(Via Slashdot.)

Kometkameratene Behind-The-Music: You can watch episodes directly from NRK or download official torrents. There is also a list of each behind-the-music entry. NEW: You can watch the whole video over at NRK Super.

My work for the Kometkameratene show is over, since production is wrapped up long before the episodes are aired. I think there are maybe 6 or 8 episodes left to be aired during this spring.

For these final episodes, it was not possible to produce a dedicated music video for each episode. So instead we did four independent music gags, disconnected from the episode theme, so the gags could be placed and recycled as needed. I don't know when each gag will be aired, and I'd rather not reveal them prematurely. So I'll wait for Easter, when they all should be available online, and type out the final four songs then. 

There's a hilarious drum battle, an excellent night-club jazz performance, a funny glove dance-and-hunt, and a jaw-droppingly awesome one-take performance by Rampejentene, struggling to get their animal tune right...

The kindness of strangers strikes again. A few weeks back, at an airport, a security girl unasked for pulled me out of the longest security line in the world and helped me just make my flight. Today, again uncalled for, complete strangers saved me. And found each other.

Prepare for an exiting and thrilling love story in the remotest of arctic wilderness, scribed by your daring correspondent.

When I woke up this morning the sun was quite alone in the sky, brimming with life like only an early spring sun can. This could be the last day with snow in my town. I decided; now or never, I am doing "Vidden", a mountain plateau between two local mountains, Ulriken and Fløien. You can access both mountains by cable and funicular from the city centre, and hike or ski between them in a few hours. I've never done this trip on skis, but as you know, I have no fear for anything. What is a mad scientist without daring expeditions, either for dangerous minerals, rare mutated cyborg-butterflies or musical inspiration? I cabled up the tallest one, procured a cup of coffee from the last outpost known to man, and set off into the wilderness, never looking back. 

It was the most perfect day ever. Spotless blue sky, friendly sun, and a vast, quiet white wilderness of solitude and inspiration. I walked with my mind for a few hours, before finally making camp just below the summit of the tallest peak on the route. I enjoyed my soggy knekkebrød with luxuriously sweaty cheese, and sent a glorious picture message to all of my friends stuck in offices. (That's ok, they send me pictures of glorious dinner parties when I'm stuck on a hotel or tour-bus.)

Well, enough loitering and relaxing in the mountains! I packed down my lunch and got ready to set off down the mountains.

Not.

My ski was FAILING. The ski bindings would not hook into place. The boot kept slipping off, any movement, and "thwack" the ski went off and continued on it's own. I kept trying and and trying but no, broken. "This is not happening," I thought. There I was, on top of the world, just having teased all my friends, and my Ski. Did. Not. Work.

I was mad! Eventually I found a way to hold my foot so it would keep the ski in place. But of course it kept slipping off, and I had to walk like a combination of a mad ninja and a delirious cripple and I faceplanted maybe 20 times down the first steep hill.

I was cursing, fuming, scheming and gnarling, and in particular I was planning my evil cruel revenge on everyone in the store who sold me this piece of utter crap ski shit, not to mention the ski producer and everyone ever related to them! I'll crucify every one of them, I'll set up huge terrible crosses of skis, all the way from Ulriken to Fløien, and stick them all up with ski poles through their limbs, and an extra pole with casters where the sun never shines, and I'll smear them all with ski wax so the sun will burn their naked skin and the winter nights will freeze their exposed cells to smithereens and I'll force rotten oranges through their eyes and pour scolding hot cocoa down the....

"Excuse me, are you having trouble with your ski"?

Said a beautiful voice. Three girls was slowly passing me and one of them, Ski Girl, noticed my ski falling off all the time. I was like "umm, yeah, it keeps falling off." 

"There is this really nice and kind ski instructor just ahead of us, he helped us with one of our skis a while back, we could try run after him and get him to wait for you? Maybe he can help you."

Wow, I was like, is this for real? Someone here, can fix my ski? Just like that? I gracefully accepted her angelic offer, and off they went! A couple of minutes later I catched up with all of them, a bunch of fresh guys and sporty girls, and the ski instructor looked at my ski, and deduced there must be ice somewhere inside the binding, and starting breathing hot air into it... and VOILA! After a little while of blowing, the ski worked again! Like new! I CAN WALK ITS A MIRACLE

I was amazed and everyone there was amazed, especially Ski Girl. And he was like, "nah, it's nothing, this is quite normal, I didn't do much", and this is could be right but still he made my day and did it humbly. A kind stranger.

BUT, you see, this is where I'm going, it gets interesting: Because I think Ski Girl actually had a crush on Ski Guy, and he on her, from their previous encounter, and me having a broken ski was FATE giving them another chance to meet. They kept looking at each other with that special look.

He was thinking: "She's so cute!"

She was thinking: "He's so awesome!"

I was thinking: "This is so a movie!"

Crucified ski producer on cross: "Let me down please?"

The rest of the trip was perfect. At the top of the next mountain I looked back, and the crowd was still at the same spot, talking, probably arranging after-ski. I walked on with a smile, imagining Ski Girl and Ski Guy getting married, having kids, living happily ever after, all of them travelling the world fixing ski bindings with their magic breath, the sun was high and I never faceplanted again and even got a free coffee for telling this story at my coffee place.

Oh and I drew a map of my expedition and noted the places of events.

A note from the latest concert at Edvard. Photos by Eivind Senneset.

I love it when a plan starts coming together. This was the third show in my concert series, and after a slightly rocky start, we're gaining good traction. I started this series with intention to experiment, develop, test and adjust my material continuously. The two first shows convinced me there was a lot of potential, and this potential is now beginning to realize.

Musically, I played very vintage Ugress tracks, a few tracks from each album, and also a couple of brand new ones. I cut my finger last week so there were some keyboard parts I couldn't rehearse properly and perform, but nothing the good old "unmute-the-playback-backup" didn't fix... For Shadow I played two old tracks in new edits, and three brand new tracks. I choose to run the Shadow set as a continuous performance, weaving the tracks together. 

Visually - the room projection worked, and it was amazing! I think it was kind of "um wow". Very glad I finally got it to work as intended, considering last time's letdown. Especially the Shadow set, where I restrained all visuals to synchronized mashups of biological microscopic material in a stern night-vision palette. The wall screen carried the main visuals, the supplemental screens ran supportive clips and the room projector ran mostly monochromatic reductions of the main visuals, or custom synced clips with high contrast. It works kind of like a super-animated light-system. I taped the show with a HD cam and will be analyzing how things are interacting, then optimize the setup and visuals for the next show.

Attendance, there were maybe around 40 people, and 50 watching online, not a lot, but the number is slowly growing, and everyone there is there to see the show, no collateral. I realize I could (should) increase this number - if I had an ounce of marketing and self-promoting in me, but I quite simply don't. I try to stick up posters whenever I have an errand somewhere, but they're covered in a few hours anyway. Digital marketing I sneak in when I dare taking a few hours break. I'd rather focus on developing music and visuals as much as possible.

I suppose my philosophy is something like this: All the marketing in the world does not make a great performance. A great performance does not need much marketing. I should spend my time on making the performance great.

Technically, we had some minor issues with the sound system during setup, but the excellent sound crew made some calls and the faulty speaker was replaced and there was sound and he saw that it was was good.

For my tech, I finally managed to get one laptop to run everything: All realtime processing, all soft-synths I'm playing, all playback and backup audio, and most impressive, all three video feeds. It is controlled by a Lemur with custom controls. This certainly minimizes setup time, it makes visual sync DEAD TIGHT and also removes a lot of potential for error. On the other side, if the laptop breaks down - hah, nothing works at all. So I keep a duplicate laptop standby just in case.

The backup laptop was right next to me on stage. At times when I had a free moment, I made sure to confirm, and surpass the laptop musician myth: Not only was I checking email, I also twittered.

Conclusion. I am satisfied. I had fun. Stuff worked. Stuff didn't work. I observed, recorded, noted, will analyze, adjust, improve, experiment, retry.

What's when's next who? I've talked a little bit with the cafe regarding schedule, we both agree that it looks like a bi-monthly schedule is better than monthly. From this I deduce that the most likely next date will be sometime late April. What will I do? Lots of plans. Need some time in the lab to cook first.

Live tonight from Kafe Edvard, Ugress and Shadow Of The Beat.

If not too much breaks down, it will be streamed here via the Ugress Live Ustream account at approx 2230 CET.

I'll also follow up on Twitter when I have a moment, follow me at SuperGMM.

Update 2130: Seems like everything works. The stream is up and running.

Update, next day: That went ok I think, nothing broke... The audio was good ,the video was not so good. I removed the embed from this post, but the recorded show is still available from the Ustream page.

New track out, Ghost Von Frost, a little pop-symphonic piece of ghosttronica.

Ugress - Ghost Von Frost by GMM

Wasn't sure if I should release this as Ugress or one of the other projects. At times the track verges into cute melodic pop territory, but there's also an element of spooky sci-fi to some parts. I've written some production notes in the journal.

If this is too sweet, rest assured this Saturdays live show with Ugress and Shadow Of The Beat will travel in the opposite direction, an expedition into dark lands and evil beats.

You can download mp3 from Soundcloud and also directly from ugress.com.

Some notes, observations and reflections around the recently released Ghost Von Frost.

As mentioned in the release post, I was unsure how and with who to release the track. Sometimes I think it runs to cute, but the cuteness is intended to work as a contrast to the somewhat jarring sci-fi parts. Being that Ugress is the most pop-oriented project, that's where it ended up. (I did almost start a new project to release this.)

Musically the track is an interesting experiement in patterns: The main melodic phrase in the body of the track is a repeating theme, while the surrounding harmonic background is being developed. It's kind of geeky structural composition. 

Production wise, the track was prototyped in Renoise, right there in that picture. I stayed in Oslo for a few days doing recordings for Kometkameratene. When traveling, or some spare time any place, I like to noodle around in Renoise with musical ideas and sketches. Here's a screen shot, the music occured to me while I was teaching myself the new pattern matrix editor.

Originally the track was much more 80ies sounding. When I decided to flesh it out, I brought it into Logic, and at first I wanted to continue this eighties sound, make a cold and melancholic synth track, but it didn't quite work. The synthetic voices and repetitive bass synth was enough on their own, so I tried something else, used lots of tiny samples from classical music pizzicatos, and built my own clusters from them to make them bigger. I also built a regular house-ish beat for it. This helped bringing a more organic sound, but also made the track cuter than I originally had envisioned. 

The melodic elements isn't terribly interesting, neither production wise nor musical wise, but as mentioned above I like that they stay in a pattern, while the harmonic background is really what brings the track forward and builds tension. When the main melodic pattern finally starts moving, towards the end, it works as a little payoff. Allthough I don't think the final part after that resolves what the track deserves.

I did much of the track building and mixing while travelling, so it's kind of an on-the-road track. Not sure what that means but that's the way it is. I only did the final balance back home on my speakers.

Finally, I did spend quite some time deciding how to name the song. The work title was "Frost", and I had several variations of barons, ghosts, frost, ladies and choirs but in the end simplified it down to "Ghost Von Frost". I like the single o's and dum-dum-dum of it, and the "Von" should perhaps hint towards which class of ghost we're dealing with here.

This coming Saturday Feb 27th, I'm playing live with Ugress and Shadow Of The Beat at Kafe Edvard, Bergen.

There will be new and vintage Ugress tracks, and certainly a lot of new Shadow material - dark shadows moving in the electric woods. 

• Ugress Live
• Shadow Of The Beat Live
• Kafe Edvard, Bergen
• February 27th, 2230 CET
• Tickets NOK 100,-
• Age limit 20 (younger attendees are allowed if accompanied)

If everything goes to plan the show will be streamed right here on ugress.com as usual.

Report from todays Signatur workshop at BEK: Six awesome kids with laptops and curious enthusiasm; Reaper realtime remix workshop, pedagotronica win.

I had prepared a set of loops and bits of a remix kit, and some extra material, with the intention of building a little remix of Blue Magnetic Monkey. I've picked up enough of Reaper during the night to kind of know my way around (there are some weird editing paradigms), but mostly I focused on how to pull in various sounds and loops, build it into some kind of song-ish structure and play with effects and properties to find inspiration - kind of playing into a remix.

I made sure to just base everything on just Reaper, no externals, to ensure everyone could copy my edits on the screen, and also continue working on their own.

It took some time to find a common platform of communication, I wasn't sure where to lay the speed of progress and each individual there has different background, but eventually I think we found a way to communicate, and together we actually built a nice start for a good remix.

The second part of the workshop, I focused on turning the laptop into a musical performance instrument; from a very basic but fundamental point. There is a simple sampler included in Reaper, and there is a onscreen MIDI keyboard. So we dropped various percussion and samples into the sampler, and the super talented noise-jazz kids went at it, going bananas on the keys! I tried conducting the madness, and captured some of the madness in Reaper. Good times.

Bek Signatur Samtids Jazz Støy Orchestra by GMM

I had great fun, I hope the kids had good fun too, or at least picked up some inspiration. It was very interesting and challenging to talk about my own process and focus on the essentials, from a pedagogic viewpoint. In particular the live aspect of hammering the laptop keyboard like crazy for noisy samples proved a great success.

Signatur is an electronic media workshop by BEK (Bergen Center for Electronic Arts), aimed at young aspiring media geniuses between 15 and 25. Signatur has a broad focus on sound, video, music, electronics, photo, animation - bits and blobs and everything between.

This Saturday I'm invited to run the workshop, focusing on electronic music: Composition, arrangement and probably also performance. I'm quite sure it will derail, deform and develop into whatever fits the moment but hopefully it will end up as some kind of making, baking and devouring electronic noise and music.

The music and sound part of the workshop has so far been based on Reaper, developed by mad genius Frankel himself, a wise choice. So I'm spending the evening freshening up my Reaper skills. I have dabbled with each major version but never investigated properly.

Looking forward to the workshop, I'll document and grab some pics and hopefully samples too.

Look at that, it is the largest spiral of ice the world has ever seen. I sampled it, without realizing how huge it was.

The Skagerrak, the sea between Norway and Denmark has been unusually cold the last few weeks. The cyclone-like pattern above in the satellite image is an epic slush of ice, slowly pulsating and rotating.

I had no idea, I was spending a few days outside Larvik, right at the top of the spiral, and one day I was going for a hike along the coast at Mølen. To my surprise, from a distance the ocean looked frozen solid, but as I approaced the beach I realized it wasn't stiff, rather a massive, compact glob of slush. It moved, but slowly, pulsing up and down with calm, unrushed waves.

Standing at the beach looking out at the breathing slush of an ocean was surreal, it was like the whole horizon was alive.

I threw a rock into the slush (is it alive?) and with sudden inspirational glee noticed the water was making a wonderful response; the rock itself created an explosive fountain of slush, and when this cloud of slush fragments came back down into itself, a wishy washy slurpy sound was produced.

I whipped out my iPhone, loaded with FiRe, carefully balanced at the edge of the slush, and spent hours throwing rocks and bits of ice into the slush.

Here is an excerpt, this is the raw recording from the iPhone, in stereo (it samples in mono, I just put different sploshes in each channel for a stereo result).

Skagerrak Ice Spiral Samples by GMM

I was not aware of the scope of the ice during sampling, only a few days later I discovered the phenomena. I am very much looking forward to manipulate and modulate those splooshes into something sinister and slurpy, worthy of the worlds largest spiral of ice.

John Nolan makes animatronics, and he must have his workshed in a damp, dark corner at the very bottom of the Uncanny Valley.

Fantastically creepy. There are great photos, but do make sure to check out the animatronic showreel. The movement of the almost-real is the ice on the cake that is a lie.

Thanks Soma Holiday!

Not perfect yet, but that's all I managed in very short amount of time. I need to run it for some time to see stats.

Kometkameratene Behind-The-Music: You can watch episodes directly from NRK or download official torrents. There is also a list of each behind-the-music entry. NEW: You can watch the whole video over at NRK Super.

For this episode, I can't remember exactly how I came up with the music or what the reference originally was. Only thing I remember, I wanted "sickness" to somehow exist in the sound of the track, not only the lyrics, but not in a bad way, more in a crazy way.

This is a track with a lot of edits and subversions, a typical hammering-it-out through pure persistence. There is a bunch of classical music in there, but I know we broke it pretty much around during preproduction, originally it was in a waltz figure, but at some point we shifted it to 4/4, with some interim versions where we experimented with multiple time signatures, but that didn't really work. Or at least I didn't like how it didn't play well with the beat and flow of the track, even if I realize multiple time signatures would make the track more complex.

I also spent a lot of time on the beats, building a kind of layered break that should both fit the mainly orchestral sound, without overloading anything. 

We wrote the lyrics, with good help from the director. The final piano solo, originally much longer, just kind of happened as I was messing around. For the umptheenth time the "capture last take as recording" key command in Logic saves the day - a keystroke, that magically catches whatever you just did as if record was enabled.

Here's the final production track.

Kometkameratene - Sykdom / Sickness by GMM