The Amazing Rolo

Chasing Geese

Here’s a track I made the other day…I took a recording of “Wild Goose Chase” played by the incredible fiddler Clyde Davenport and edited two little sections out.

I then imported those samples into Ableton and layered them all together, using follow actions to randomize the way they were layered and played back. This created a sort of Steve Reich phasing effect, except with the added fun of randomness.

Enjoy!

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Gol show at the Filmhouse

I’ll be playing some music tomorrow night at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh. My friends Pete Vilk and Roxana Pope have included me in their Gol project, so I’ll be playing some keyboards and doing plenty of live sampling, Max/MSP trickery, and general sonic mayhem! We’ve been rehearsing a lot lately and it sounds great, a mix of electronic, acoustic, Iranian traditional music, improvisation, and heavy beats. The show is part of the Edinburgh Iranian Festival, which features great films, music, art, and a really nice logo.

We’ve got some more shows coming up, including one very special one that all of you in the internets will be able to watch, so check back soon for more details.

In the mean time, I’ll be headed to London on Monday, for a very exciting interview! Who ever said I was “French-born”? I often find that people assume that your citizenship is the same as your birthplace…

Darkness in Glasgow

It looks like a video of mine will be shown in Glasgow next week…

As we speak is an artists video screening night in Glasgow dedicated to the promotion of new contemporary video works. The next one will take place on January the 20th 2009 in Stereo, Renfield Lane (behind Central Station). Free entry.

See the As We Speak myspace page for more information.

To celebrate, here is the video that will be shown, for those of you who can’t make it (including me, unfortunately!). It’s called “Darkness”, and it’s a strange abstract sci-fi short story about what would happen on a planet where sound and light do not act in the same way they do on Earth.

The concept of a planet where light and sound are reversed is an idea I’ve had for a while…it has some pretty interesting implications, and I find it generally fascinating to think that light is made up of vibrations, just like sound, but that those vibrations are so fast that we can’t hear them. That has always seemed rather arbitrary to me, and I love to think about what life would be like if we had evolved to hear the frequency band that we now perceive as light. Even more fascinating, perhaps, is the idea that everything is made of vibrations anyway, as illustrated by string theory.

But I’m getting out of my depth! Back to the video…whilst sketching out the concept for “Darkness” I wrote a short story and made an image to explore the ideas. The short story eventually turned into the narrative for the movie, and you can see that image here:

Is that a cowboy outfit?

Here’s a cool video art piece by Lucy Keany, with sound design by me:

“Is That a Cowboy Outfit” by Lucy Keany from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

It was shown at the Edinburgh College of Art degree show 2008. Imagine it projected into a totally blackened room.

Doing the sound design was loads of fun – Lucy and I agreed very quickly on the sound aesthetic we were after, which makes everything easier! I found much of the source material on archive.org, which is a fantastic place to look for copyright-free sound and video.

The walls have ears

It’s been a long time since my last post, because I’ve been working on several projects at once. One of these has finished up, for the moment, and I’m now back in Edinburgh. I spent most of March in Paris working on a play called “Ces murs qui nous écoutent” (“The Walls Have Ears”), which was written and directed by Fabrice Macaux (loosely based on the novel by Spôjmaï Zariâb) and featured Delphine Zucker in the lead role.

I did a little bit of acting, wrote and recorded original music and performed the sound design live onstage. I also wrote some Wii software for some wireless motion-based sound control, which I will post soon on the Loop Machine site. We performed at the Lavoir Moderne Parisien and the Theatre Sylvie Monfort in Saint Brice.

The story revolves around a woman living and working in a totalitarian country, where books and culture are disallowed. I played the part of her colleague, who disappears after warning her to stop reading books. If you speak French you can read this rather positive review!

Here is one of the songs I wrote for the play…the set was a giant rotating steel cube with colored movable panels. At several key points I would turn the cube while this music played, symbolizing the passage of time. This song is built from many of the sound elements that were used in the rest of the play, such as flipping through pages in a book, the sound of the work bell, and her heartbeat.

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We did a lot of filming, as well, so I hope to post some video here in the near future.

Loop Machine 2.0 released!

Today I am happy to announce the release of my Loop Machine 2.0 software! As regular readers of this blog will know, this is the result of five months of very hard work, so this is very exciting for me. Go to the Loop Machine Website at theamazingrolo.net/wii/ to check it out. You can also see the press release here. Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

Done and dusted

Yesterday I handed in my thesis. I’ve been working on it since May, and I think it turned out pretty well. It was an interactive sound installation that tracked the location of a listener and changed the sound according to their movement. Check out the website for video, audio, and more.

Tomorrow I’m heading back to the states, and I’ll be travelling all around the world for the next month or so. I’ll be getting back to serious work on the Wii Loop Machine, so hopefully within the next couple of weeks I’ll have some new toys for you.

Another sound toy

I’m quite busy these days working on my thesis – I’m making an interactive sound installation based on movement. It’s very cool but very stressful! So all of my other projects have taken a bit of a backseat for the moment.

Well, almost all of them. I have found the time to make a new little bit of software for you. In audio-geek-speak it’s an FM synth where the modulating frequency is generated using subtractive synthesis. The frequency and harmonicity ratio are controlled by seperate step sequencers. In non-geek-speak it’s a fun sound toy that generates rhythms and melodies.

Download (mac osx only for the moment), unzip, and play around:
The Amazing Rolo’s Filtractive Synth 2.0
Update 7.29.07 :: I just uploaded a new and improved version, so click the link again if you already tried it.

I’ll also be playing a gig at the Forest Cafe on August 7th, with some other sound designers. Details to follow.

Mariage Blanc

Cory and I recently finished the play we were working on in France. We wrote and performed original music at a 13th century abbey outside of Paris, and it all went quite well. We recorded most of the music, here is the main theme:

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For this song Cory would play guitar and sing, and I would sample and loop his playing and singing to build up all of the layers in real time. It was a bit nerve racking but it worked each time!

In other news, you will notice a new link in the upper left corner of this blog, replacing what was previously my “links” page. Instead I have an online resume (or CV, depending where you’re from) that lists many of the projects I have been involved in over the past few years. Please take a look at it and email me any thoughts (or job offers).

Finally, there is some interesting movement afoot on the Wii Loop Machine front, stayed tuned for further updates.

Sound toy!

The other day I made a slightly silly little sound toy. You can load in a sample (wav, aiff, or sdII) and manipulate the sound by drawing in a box. It’s fun!
The Amazing Rolo’s Visual Sonicalizer for Mac OS X