noah adler

Reminder to self: remember that fretted instruments have their character based not insignificantly on the sounds their tunings make easy to voice. guitar sounds the way it does for a reason. use the hand patterns that feel funky and you just may be coaxing out the inherent characteristic funkiness of the guitar. don’t be overly anxious to jump into music theoretical chord patterns. don’t be afraid to use plenty of open strings and patterns and time signatures that don’t really make much sense but feel good.

(I wrote this down on a piece of paper a few months ago when watching this.)

Some of my friends know me to have a near-obsession over the emerging NUI paradigm, known to most people through little things like Apple’s iPhone or Jeff Han’s famous video. When I first saw the video, it struck me, as many, that a big change was coming. Others have felt similarly to me, but some have failed to grasp the full picture, and dismiss this revolutionary development out of hand when they try to use it with their favorite software and find it less than usable. I too encountered this disappointment years ago, when I first tried the experiment. The touch hardware is only one side of the story, but this takes a while to realize.

I started recording music on a Tascam four-track in high school, and being the nerd that I am, quickly moved into DAW land before that term really had a meaning (it’s still rather nebulous), and have been recording for my own sake ever since. As music and technology advanced (and they both have), and as I grew, I began to tire of recording. I love to hate on Ableton, but their Live software really did shake up the game. Here, finally, was an application which truly transformed the computer into an interactive musical instrument. Recording had finally broken free of the linear-time it had been bound to ever since the days of tape (well, Robert Fripp might take exception to that assertion, but he himself is exceptional).

As I began to play more with the software, I of course became frustrated with the mouse interface. I was trying to make music, not check my e-mail, damn it! Taking my hands off the guitar, picking up a mouse, finding the cursor on the screen to know how to move, it, clicking a weird button… the ergonomics were just too frustrating to make continued use of in a studio environment, let alone in performance. Being a highly process-oriented individual, I began to think of alternate solutions. A foot controller like Behringer’s FCB1010 is of great utility, but lacks the dynamic feedback capabilities that make modern screens so beautiful. It became clear that a touch screen would offer the best of all worlds. So I bought one. Only it turns out, all that software really was designed for a mouse and keyboards. The icons were just too small for my fat fingers to accurately press! On top of that, things like rotary faders don’t have a consistent feel that maps to fingers. The mouse pointer can disappear when the button is clicked, but my finger stays put. Do I want to drag up and down with my finger, well away from the display of the rotary control, in order to rotate it, really?

Fast forward. We are on the verge of cheap, omnipresent multitouch-capable hardware, with operating system-level support. This will be most radically felt in the multimedia and artistic realms, as intuitive interface diminishes the barrier of entry caused by software learning curves. Design interfaces to respond to the expressive nature of gesture, and people lose their fear of experimentation. Create interesting parameter mappings between the physical input and the digital result, and configuration choices cease to be overwhelming.

All this is a bit long winded to get to what I really want to address. Steinberg’s VST audio plug-in architecture is a defacto standard with a mind-boggling assortment of third-party offerings. Most plug-ins also offer custom GUIs for editing their parameters. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these work extremely poorly with touch. How hard would it be to add some extra exports to a VST library to expose a NUI presentation in parallel to the common GUI? Would it be possible to retrofit a layer to fit over existing VSTs? Perhaps some recommendations, if not a formal specification, for the pieces of VSTGUI to avoid in a NUI case– for instance, CCursorType doesn’t really make sense at all, and neither does CMouseWheelAxis. But there are more subtle things: what knob mode works best for touch screens? In my experience, linear click drag (kLinearMode) doesn’t seem to make much sense for touch, but for kCircularMode, care must be taken that the knob’s representation is sized large enough for the fat fingers to accurately manipulate. After all, they don’t get any of the tactile feedback of a real physical knob, so proper placement is pretty much all visual. In any case, it would be great to see some guidance on retrofitting the myriad VSTs out there to transition them from WIMP to OCGM in a timely fashion. I suppose, as always, it’ll just take some time for the adjustment to soak into the collective consciousness. And, as always, I’ll be patient but eager.

I’ve been using Git for some projects lately, and overall I have to say it’s a good tool. One thing that has had me scratching my head for a while is the behavior of line endings. There is a lot of conflicting advice on the Web regarding the ‘best’ usage of the core.autocrlf option across different platforms. After much wasted time trying to figure out why my working tree showed modifications even after a fresh checkout, I’ve concluded the best course of action is to always set the option to false. Pretty much any IDE or text editor these days, as well as any compiler one could consider using, supports either line ending mode. Git will get confused if some files in the repository have CRLF endings and others have LF, thinking you have made changes when you have made none. In this situation, git diff will list an entire file’s contents as removed, followed by the same exact content added (well, not exactly the same… the line endings are different! But who cares?) A git diff -w, on the other hand, will not list out this absurdity. Just do a git config core.autocrlf false followed by a git reset --hard and things will be where you want them. Let the IDEs deal with the line endings, and Git is happier to just deal with content tracking however it comes at it, and I’m happier to get back to real work rather than mucking about with the tool.

I’ve been playing a lot of music recently. I’ve fallen in with some great players in a band called Fuma (http://fuma.fm), whom I feel extremely lucky to be playing with.

Here’s a clip from our show last night at Al’s bar:

Also, big thanks and respect to Nemo & the Free World for their killer performance. Check it out.

It’s been a pretty interesting time here in Melbourne. I haven’t managed to get out musically as much as I’d hoped, but I have had some good time to practice and write, and it’s been good to unwind. I’ve otherwise kept busy with scoping the culture and taking various day trips to the countryside. The bit of musical exposure I have managed to get has indicated an extremely healthy scene.

Went out on Sunday morning, got a flat white down and scoped the market. Got invited to join a busker at the market, but like a fool I forgot to bring a cable with me, knowing it would be provided at the jam session I was heading to later that day. Silly not to be prepared anyway, but oh well, lesson learned. Roamed around the Central Business District (read: downtown) for a while, and heard a variety of quite impressive busking. First was a mostly flamenco mostly diatonic duo, obviously sanctioned by the city judging by their impressive PA setup, and they sounded quite polished. After chatting to them for a bit, I moved on and spotted a trio on banjo, upright bass (bowed), and harmonica, which was quite strange and not at all what I’m used to hearing from banjo, but hey, other side of the world. Next up walking down an alley towards the station, there was a young jazz guitar duo who I talked to, some very friendly and informative students named Tim and Malcolm. Made me wish for a fleeting moment I could go back to school and study music, but no regrets here, my path is alright, and it’s all mine.

Soon enough headed down to Williamstown suburb to the Rose of Australia Hotel for the blues jam session I’d read about. Introduced myself to Tommy the host, a Swedish fellow (imagine that!) and quite a good guitar player. The jam session started out a bit slow, with some low tempo shuffles, but as a few hours passed, more people showed up, more beers were consumed, and the place really started to rock. Took me a bit to find my stride, but I think by the end everyone was happy to have a bit of Kentucky infusion. Looking forward to going back here next Sunday.

Last night we went down to a venue in St. Kilda called the Esplanade Hotel (aka the Espy), which had maybe four separate performance spaces inside. We walked in to a power trio covering Cream and Hendrix, and a room full of people really digging, even dancing! The guitarist was really bringing the performance, playing with his teeth, etc., and everyone seemed to be having a great time. Brilliant. Next band up had a girl fronting on guitar and vox, but opening up with another blues cover (Spoonful), spoonfed again to whiteys by Cream, left me a little disappointed. I’m still looking to get a sense of original music coming out of this place, but the blues-based rock and roll scene seems in full swing, which is great by my mind. Makes me feel right at home. Got shooed off by a couple too-eager birds, and moved onto the next venue, which had a completely different sort of cover band, a group called Play-Doh playing powerpop-punk. Still they put on a good show, and the room was full of dancing. After being in Seattle for a while, that’s so refreshing.

Overall I’m very taken with the Melbourne music scene. Seems like it might have the ecosystem and support I’m looking for, if only I were able to stick around for a bit. I’ve got a lot of pent up music, though, that needs to be put down on an album pretty immediately. Perhaps I can scrounge up a group here in town, but my heart kind of crying to get back stateside. Que sera, sera.

I had a great whirlwind of a time in LA, consisting mostly of seeing shows and meeting a lot of cool musicians and letting all the days blur together. Enjoyed the beautiful train ride down from SLO, watching the California countryside slowly transition to the sprawling graffiti encrusted suburban jungle. That night, Paul took me to see his friends in Pizza! (formerly The New Motherfuckers) at the Museum of Neon Art. They put on a cool show of wacky pop music, with a lot of stylistic changes, almost prog pop. Saw a group called Fol Chen the next night, another very cool cinematic pop show. That seems to be the theme in LA: put on a show. I guess it should be obvious based on the reputation of the town, but it was really enlightening to get a feel for it firsthand. There’s something to be said for polishing a show to flawless perfection, but I just can’t get over jamming myself. I can’t help but think that west coast musicians should spend some time in the south to cross-pollinate, cause both approaches certainly have their own merit.

Sunday we drove up to Joshua Tree and met some of Paul’s good friends who had been camping out there. We played around on the big rocks there for a while. The desert is a pretty unforgiving environment, with thorns on every plant and mostly bees buzzing near ears for company. I scraped my leg open on a rock almost immediately, and the bees seemed to bother other people, but I think I was a bit too exhausted to care about them, and they left me well enough alone. Paul performed some amazing acrobatics to get away from their buzzing though haha! The highlight of the excursion, though, was heading to Pioneer Town to see The Eagles of Death Metal who put on a BRILLIANTLY rocking show at one of the coolest venues I’ve been to. The frontman really brought a fantastic energy– maybe the rock star isn’t an extinct creature after all. We went back to the campsite in the park after that, and I lay by the fire gazing up at the stars in the clear desert sky for a long time before drifting off.

Next day I decided to go through with it and hopped on the plane to Melbourne. I’m sitting here now having a beautiful cup of black tea. I had a little bit of a chance to write on the plane, and had a nice conversation with a fellow traveling musician in the Auckland layover. Don’t know if I’ll get a chance to record anything, as I have very minimal gear with me, but I hope to come away with some nice new hopefully performable material, assuming I can remember everything that’s happened since I left Seattle. The toilets here flush backwards, but time still keeps moving forwards. I think I’ll be headed back to the States after not too long, but for now, I need to unwind and let my soul settle a bit. Keep on straight ahead.

I’m sitting next to a crackling fire in the back yard at Ben’s place in San Luis Obispo. We’re getting ready to cook some dumpster flanksteak. Nine chairs encircle the fire pit, five of them being tree stumps. To my right about ten meters away, seemingly on the same level ground as me, perches Kat’s treehouse. There’s another one directly ahead of me, further away across the yard, with roof lined by a string of cool electric green lights. Ben’s treehouse is over in the middle of the yard, eclipsed by the fire, and the village continues from there. Earlier today I busked for the first time, accompanied by a drummer called Davey who’s been a street musician since he was seventeen living in the Haight. We made nine dollars in about a half hour, and split the pot. It felt good, even though I messed up half the chords and all of the words to Cinnamon Girl. Earlier this morning I did my first yoga, at a class taught by roommate Sunshine. Riding around my bike after that I realized my back felt less tense than it has in a very long time.

Friday night I went to a drum circle with Tim down at the Cal Poly organic farm. It was the first drum circle I’ve actually sat in, and it was about what I expected. A bunch of uppermiddle white kids, with and without dreadlocks, sitting around a fire, not entirely sure of themselves, but enthusiastic to have some sort of ritualistic experience. A couple friends of Tim’s showed up and really brought the leadership in the circle with their confident playing. We didn’t stay too long because we wanted to get over to the dumpster in case anything good was happening. There was a cop busting someone in the lot, but we decided it would be okay. We scrounged a little bit of stuff, mostly potatoes, but it was still a cool time. It just wasn’t a very good day to go, as the dumpster was quite full.

Kat took us surfing on Tuesday and Wednesday, at Pismo and Morro Bay, respectively. Surfing is awesome. Floating effortlessly across the smaller waves, balancing on the board, salt sea foam splashing the face when cresting, and the strange feeling of warmth in the water despite its obvious coldness– but actually catching and riding a wave is just too incredible. I never managed to stand up myself, but still caught a couple enough to experience the exhilaration of being swept along the rolling peak, and shifting weight to carve the board laterally. Kat’s golden retriever Saint seems to be the best surfer around though.

I’m working slowly to clean this site up, as I’m slowly trying to move from emphasis on my computer programming side to my musician side. In the meantime, my presentations of myself on MurdochSpace will be more informative and current: my personality and my music are still maintained separately for some reason.