It has become my [illogical] goal to either attend or throw a rave in North Carolina, and possibly get a consistent scene going where I can enjoy my music with others.  As many of you might know, I like the kind of music you’d be hard pressed to hear on the radio or in a club.

As a result, recently I’ve taken an interest in the NC electronic music scene.  After going around Ravelinks and finding some pertinent threads I decided to venture out to my first big electronic music event: the Venus Festival.  I figured that with acts like Planet of the Drums (featuring Dieselboy!), End: The DJ, and the legendary Charles Feelgood, there was surely going to be some kind of showing.  Besides, it would be nice for my first big foray to be at a legit event and not some abandoned warehouse with a scene I wasn’t familiar with.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d at least like some names first.

Two days before the showing, I coughed up $45 for an advanced day-pass ticket, and looked forward to what I expected to be the experience of a lifetime.

So I drove out with my girl to Harmony, NC (about 2.5 hours from where I am) on Saturday, October 10th, 2009.  I followed a spray-painted sign to a grass parking lot, and a small stand with a few people standing around.  A tractor was about to ferry about 10 people somewhere.  After waiting around and talking to a couple burly security guys and a woman handling money, we were instructed to walk down a nondescript mud/gravel road.

After walking around a couple bends and seeing a golf cart whiz by with some security on it, I found the Venus Festival:

The Open Area

A few vendors selling food, a couple CDJs set up next to a barn with top 40 blaring, and some people wandering about.  After walking around for a while (and talking to the nice folks at Harmony Farms, the host), I managed to find two small stages and a large indoor arena type area.  I was told by the Harmony folks that the national acts would be playing there sometime around 7 PM, and that I should explore and go see “where everyone is.”  After walking down to the large arena, thoughts bounced around in my head of the massive party that would soon be here.

This is where it’s going down.

Off the side path, I found a tent farm with some music booming and a few clusters of tents.  I saw a few people dressed in rave gear (the first I’ve seen outside of the internet!  Wow!), some great tunes playing, and people practicing poi.

The tent town.

So then we waited.  We practiced some poi, I got out my flowlights and made sure that later on that night, I wasn’t going to completely embarrass myself.  We walked around.  We waited some more.  And more.  And nothing happened, no one seemed to be setting up or doing much of anything.  The biggest signs of life were the glassblowing booth in that big arena I posted up there, and the vendors packing up.  After talking to a few of the vendors and asking what was going on, I got my first inkling something was up.

They were packing up because “no one was here, and turnout was terrible.”  Apparently, yesterday had been even worse.  I learned from talking to some other attendees that, the day before, Planet of the Drums had played to a crowd of 150 people.  To give you some perspective, that’s a smaller crowd than what shows up in most clubs in downtown Raleigh routinely for alcohol and top 40 bullshit.  Planet of the Drums.  World famous Drum and Bass DJs drawing a crowd one third the size of the line for Pixar swag at SIGGRAPH.

After being told to raid the food as I saw fit by the vendors (”We’re gonna have to toss it all anyway.”), I gave a generous tip and left with some sausages.  And a couple bags of buns they were going to toss (ducks gotta eat too!).

At this point, things were beginning to coalesce in my head.  The party paradox: no one was here because no one was here.  Vendors were packing up because business was bad and they weren’t making money.  DJs weren’t showing up because there was no one to play to.  I wandered down to the arena where the only official looking people were milling around.  Besides, there was a huge, white bubble inflating down there that wasn’t there a while ago.

That’s ominous.

I talked to the first guy who I saw setting stuff up.  As to who he is, he’s the guy that the Venus Festival contact e-mail goes to.  His name eludes me at the moment, but I’ll update this when I get that again.  Long story short, he told me that turnout was extremely low, people are going into debt as a result, and all the people that were “good, and still showed up” were congregating in this area.  Not surprisingly, most of the DJs bailed because they’d heard no one showed up.  Really incredible shame.  I heard that one headlining group was still going to be playing that night, though: Astral Projection.  And they were putting on a private concert for the faithful inside of the igloo pictured above.  Awesome.

Stay tuned for part two with the resolution to the Venus Festival (for the time I was there), and some more commentary. Not to mention… An inflatable igloo! DJ Psilonaut! Further speculation about the scene! And a private show by Astral Projection. I promise it will be interesting.

Maybe it’s a perfect storm of digital audio compression, the loudness war, and the portable music set of generations?  Think about it.  In under a century’s time (don’t check the dates on this, I’m just thinking mainstream inventions, widespread acceptance, etc.), we’ve gone from music being exclusively live or performed, to being readily and cheaply available, at whatever volume we like at whatever quantity we like.  That boils down to badly mastered, badly compressed music being piped into tinnitus wracked ears on crappy iPod earbuds.  For hours a day.  I guess it’s better than radio quality.

As a race, maybe we’ve become desensitized to music, leaving us wanting it louder, quicker, more convenient… but not caring about the quality?

I hate to think that that’s true.

CMOY Headphone amp, Grado SR-80s, iAudio X5

My setup doesn’t look the prettiest, nor is it the most high end, but I can hear flautists inhale, and I can tell that the clipping on certain NIN tracks is on purpose.  I end up listening to Happy Hardcore and Industrial on it most of the time, ironically.

I know a few audiophiles of my generation that indulge in noise-canceling headphones (particularly the Audio-Technica variety), high quality surround sound systems, FLAC encoded albums, mild flirtations with vinyl (I have a couple of my favorite trance tracks), not to mention my whole involvement with non-mainstream MP3 players.  I remember a certain back and forth I had with Klipsch over their 4.1 Promedia speaker set, the subsequent upgrading of my pre-amp, and my eventual surrender to getting a set of Logitech Z-540s.

Are we special or elitist?  I wouldn’t say so, wanting good quality music is something that’s just a higher priority to us.  Or maybe the rest of my friends are just as finnicky as I am about good sound. What I do know is that we clearly aren’t the majority (at least according to the Stanford study), and this is disheartening.  I haven’t seen an MP3 player as suited to my needs since the Rio Karma as my current iAudio X5, and that’s almost 3 years old now (two new batteries later…  Thanks for soldering that, Chris!).  Maybe that’s because the public just doesn’t care about audiophile sound, and the audiophiles will find their own ways to get by.  Oh well.

At least I can tell the difference between a 128 kbps, 256kbps, and uncompressed file…  Most of the time.

This concept has weighed heavily on the music/audio mastering industry, and more than a few voices have been heard arguing about it.  I just stumbled on an interesting site, Turn Me Up! | Bringing Dynamics Back To Music, which details the “loudness wars” in published music and the like.

This video briefly explains the difference between a typical popular song published in 1989 and its theoretical counterpart published in 2006.  What this video details is a difference in audio dynamic range, or essentially the range between quiet and loud within a recording.  From what I’ve read and heard about the Loudness Wars over the last decade or so, music is being cranked up to the maximum (just shy of clipping) to get the biggest bang for the buck out of your stereo/headphones.  On the surface, it seems to satisfy consumers and people seem to want it.

However, in this case (via Mastering Media Blog), Metallica has been accused of compressing the hell out of tracks in “Death Magnetic” and distorting them.  Interestingly, the problem doesn’t show up in Guitar Hero 3.  Ian Shepherd notes that blame most likely falls on “800 pound gorillas” of the recording industry, which isn’t much of a surprise.  I don’t think Metallica appeals to the audiophile demographic anymore anyway.

I know when I balance audio, I typically push it to within a comfortable range as far as it will go before clipping.  But I’m usually working with dialog with a musical bed and not the music itself…  And it’s usually a corporate market that’s listening on tiny, tinny weak laptop speakers.  Or so I’ve heard.  Sometimes there are board room presentations and trade shows.

It makes you think, though.  The industry seems to be struggling to strike a balance between what pleases the masses and what has integrity.  I know that’s been argued about for decades in terms of what’s popular versus what’s worth listening to…  But the fact that it gets down to an issue of how it was mastered is amazing to me.  I guess having that “popular music sound” isn’t just an issue of beat, chord progressions, and subject matter, but which technician was in the studio?

]]> http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=77 http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=59 http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=59#comments Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:22:45 +0000 Brian http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=59

Testing Caption

Re-Potting with Resources: What Would You Make?

This is an interesting article.  The jist of it is that nothing in life is certain, and that concentrating on the possibility of what you really want is important.  Which is why I’ve purchased this book.  It’s always been a dream of mine to really be involved with the music that I love, but I wasn’t exactly sure how.  I’ve figured out how to take it to the next level though: DJing.  I make no presumption that it’s going to be easy or glamorous, but that’s not the point.

The simple truth of it is that I think the music I like just isn’t very common in circles around here.  A few names dominating my play lists are Bonkers, Mind.In.A.Box, Iambia (thanks for the limited edition CD, Ben!)…  Alternative electronica, UK Hardcore, and electronic body music.  I’m not looking into this stuff because it’s not around here, either.  I have a genuine love for this music that’s shared by a couple close friends… but it really doesn’t go any further than that in this country.

I also think that this love for music and active involvement with it ties closely to my love for storytelling and motionography.  I can’t really look at something that’s well made or composed without thinking “damn, what’s stopping me from doing that?”  Well, time to stop thinking that about music and motionography, at least.

But anyway, the point is that I have a fire in my belly when it comes to music and I’ve got to do something about it.  Stay tuned for future developments.

Speaking of fire, there was a nasty accident on I-40 yesterday, and I passed it going to Chapel Hill.  After cresting a hill and seeing a long line of traffic ahead, I knew there had to be a wreck or something.  Leah then pointed out to me a huge column of smoke, and I noticed a fire truck and ambulance screaming up the road.  Fast forward to driving past what looked like an accident (with firefighters scrambling, police milling about, and ambulances freshly gone) with a swath of fire on the side of the road and an overturned garbage hauling truck (not a collection truck, more like a freighter).  I spotted a few hundred small fires smoldering on the side of the highway where it met the forest, and then the huge overturned truck full of garbage.  A little bit up the road we spotted the tracks where it crossed the median before slamming into the embankment after going out of control through oncoming traffic lanes.

So in the midst of economic recession and the whole world acting crazy, something like a devastating five vehicle accident can bring things into sharp focus.  At least we’re all alive to dream about what we want to do, and most of us are safe for the moment.  Go think about what you’d do if you had the chance, and maybe fortune will force you to do it tomorrow (or later today).

Pullen in the Snow

Took a little walk to Pullen Park today. Everything was covered in snow, and it was around sunset. Awesome. Leah and I got there a little after the Design School official sanctioned snowball fight… so the ground was a little chewed up in places and whatnot, but nothing ugly at all. It was just a little traveled. Anyway, it was beautiful.

One thing bothered me though. I noticed the geese in the park honking around like they usually do, but they seemed slower and more desperate than usual. I wished I had some food for them and whatnot, they just seemed slow and a bit downtrodden. Then I noticed the indie kids a little up the guard rail. Yeah, throwing snowballs at the birds.

Birds!

Nothing irks me more than people being genuinely inconsiderate like that.  I’m no PETA follower, but that’s a crummy thing to do no matter how you slice it.  They’re just ducks, geese, coots, whatever.  They’re not hurting you, and if you wing a snowball at them you could hurt them.

So I started making snowballs and actively looking at the indies (not the race, the horn rim kids and the ones with ironic shoes) down the way a bit.  After about five good rigid pack iceballs were made, I noticed them noticing me.  Then they left their snowballs and left the park.  Go team.  Not the most mature thing to do, but hey, ducks can’t make snowballs.  It all evens out.

Seriously guys.  I mean, throwing snowballs at a gathering of ducks on the one day we get real snow?  It’s not as big a crime as the bright green/black striped hoodie one horn rimmed indie was wearing, but still.  Go be jerks somewhere else.  I’m sure it’ll involve Helvetica somehow.

Oh yeah.  We got a new president today.  That was pretty cool.  I’ll leave the coverage up to everyone else, but I can’t get over how hilarious Obama’s expression is here:

Benediction for Obama’s Inaugural by the Reverend Dr. Lowery (5:14 in)

The way his smile fades into a frown tells me he wasn’t given an advance copy of this benediction.  When white will know what’s right?  How in hell is he supposed to react to a statement like that without people getting antsy about it?  Some forums have already lit up with complaints about the statement.  I just think it was an awkwardly worded blurb in a line of otherwise pleasantly rhymey racial inspirational phrases.

All in all, though, great speech from Obama, and largely forgettable speeches from everyone else.  Oh, and Itzhak Perlman and Yo-yo Ma were amazing.

Interesting thing happened to me recently.  At SIGGRAPH2008, I won a copy of Cinema 4D Release 10.5  in the Student Volunteer giveaways.  Awesome.  But unfortunately, because of my work load and the hectic nature of finishing up my schooling for the foreseeable future, I didn’t get a chance to install it.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I crack open the box and look for a serial during installation.  Uh oh.  No serial, and I needed to register within 90 days to get a valid code for installation.  Great.  Now I’m out $900 of free software because I didn’t install it in time.

So I send off the registration anyway, hoping that the people at Maxon could find it in their hearts to spare a key anyway.  I hear nothing for about a week.  I figure that they just ignored me because my code was expired anyway.  It’s understandable I guess.

Then I stumbled over a package left on the front step of my apartment complex as I left for the night.  Out of chance I checked the name on it (I wasn’t expecting anything) and saw “Brian Lee” on there.  Weird.  I opened it up and found a new commercial copy of Cinema 4D Release 11!

So not only did Maxon go out of their way and respond to my late request, they sent me the newest version!  What great people.  I wonder if they know what a boon this is to me; I’m going to be starting out with my motion graphics career this year and this is going to be  a huge asset.

So thanks to you Maxon, and the SIGGRAPH2008 committee as well for awarding me this amazing prize.

So this is my first blog posting in a while.  A few things happened since here and there: I graduated with my 2nd degree (BA in Communication with a Digital Media focus) from NCSU, signed up with The Creative Group, and have been job/freelance hunting ever since December.  Oh, and I just updated the theme on my blog here, so some of my old postings may be a little broken.

At any rate, it’s a great time for a lot of new beginnings: new software, new careers, new position in life, no class, no homework…  Lots of interesting changes.  And hopefully I’ll get a chance to post and update here more often.

I just stumbled on a band after Youtubing a new game on Steam, Audiosurf.

After listening to the tracks they have posted on their Myspace Page I’ve become a big fan. They’re mostly guitar accompaniment to a pre-written Nintendo synth track (from what I can tell), but the appeal is undeniable. A lot of bitpop bands that I’ve heard just seem to write normal music and filter it through the old-style instruments. Anamanaguchi really knows what made the old music special; they impart that certain simplicity and sincerity that was inherent to the old music, and a real sense of adventure. Their song “Helix Nebula” does an excellent job of this. The bouncy lead with its close harmony, with the thumping authentic Nintendo beat behind it drives the whole feeling of old-school Nintendo home.

Finding stuff like this makes me jones for the classic NES/SNES vs. Genesis days. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but games seemed simpler and better back then. Games actually needed merit to do well (although I know there were a fair share of big name flops that sold well), emphasizing solid control, replayability, and innovative system tricks (hell, SNES games were written in Assembly. That’s hardcore) that pushed the hardware to its limits. Plus, any modern RPG has yet to top Final Fantasy III (Japanese VI) or Chrono Trigger, even with their fancy polygons and DVD quality FMV.

If I hear one more person exalt Halo as an excellent game, I’m gonna send them a download link to Starsiege: Tribes, a game that’s better in every way (except graphics) and beat them to the punch by 3 years. Not that they’re qualified for direct comparison, but there are so many first person shooter games that wipe the floor with Halo several times over.

]]> http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=28 http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=27 http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=27#comments Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:16:15 +0000 Brian http://www.wondershock.com/blog/?p=27 Anyone who knows me knows that I have something of an obsession with hand-eye oriented hobbies. After my last couple year venture into yo-yoing, I’ve decided I want to take up something simpler and more rewarding (in my opinion), not to mention cheaper. I don’t know if you get simpler than this.

3.5″ Acrylic!

Ever since I saw a few contact juggling videos on Youtube, not to mention a brief reference in a Doctor Popular video, I’ve been mystified by it. It looks like an incredibly meditative exercise, and a good way to work on fluidity and range of motion. I can’t wait to reach a level where I can just string together techniques with great fluidity, endlessly. It look almost like an experience on par with Tai-Chi, deep meditation, or even liquid dancing.

In a way, it seems like such a simple and universal exercise that it gets you more in touch with your body, and in tune with gravity.

Pretty.

I just picked up a 3.5″ acrylic ball from Dr. Bob’s Magic Shop for $13.50. I mention that because the price on them is usually pretty steep; I saw similar balls on Amazon and other places for over $40. Word on the net is that Dr. Bob’s is cheaper because their acrylics are less pure, have defects, and so forth. They’re marketed as beginner acrylics, so it’s less painful to hurt something that’s not perfect to begin with. As far as I can see, mine was pretty perfect when I got it, though.

As soon as I’m decent, I’m sure I’ll have a video up with some sweet tunes by Mind.In.A.Box or someone like that. I’ve been getting into them recently, thanks to my friend Ben who has excellent taste in industrial electronica.

Front view

Top view

Using nothing but a paper clamp and the clip from a Pilot Uniball, I was able to get one channel going for Guitar Hero. Needless to say, I’m pretty happy with the solution… Because it was free and it works.

My friend Ben, producing his own media.

We’re getting way too focused. Over dinner with a friend the other day, we discussed that as far as human beings go, we’re getting pretty specialized. It’s generally accepted by [most of industrialized] society that as we grow up, we go to school, and eventually settle into a profession (or a handful of them). Very few people actually do everything for themselves; these professions allow us to become interdependent and concentrate on our own slice of the work. It’s a great way to make sure quality services and products are developed, but there are obvious trade-offs.

When did entertainment become one of those slices? I see people eat food they didn’t make, live places they didn’t build, and use goods they didn’t craft. So why not apply the same principle to how we relax and enjoy ourselves?

Maybe I’m a little biased. Right now I’m working as a digital media designer, and as a result, work with many of the same tools that the mass media use. Among other things, I write/remix/play music, make animations, and write stories for myself. As a result, I look at the mass media not just as a consumer, but as a student and competitor. I love watching a well directed story, but at the same time a little voice in my head says “When are you going to do that?”

A lot more people these days seem to be asking the same question. With the advent of YouTube, Newgrounds, and similar sites that are based on user created content, a culture of media literacy and homegrown entertainment is being nurtured. You’ve heard it all before, everyone’s a director, animator, performer now, with an audience that reaches most corners of the civilized globe. It’s a great creative outlet, and the potential is enormous. I heard from a friend that the writer’s strike is actually causing people to depend on YouTube for entertainment. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

But is this the voice of all the people that were producing media anyway? Or have we gotten to the point where people who wouldn’t normally produce are doing so? Is the next step revisiting the days when families had at least one piano player in the house? I wonder if families might even become amateur production studios, and take home movies to a new level. Dad handles the A/V, junior writes and performs the soundtrack, mom does the writing, and sis takes on the lead role.

I’m all for anything that takes our dependence off the mass media. I know we still tend to get our news through the usual channels, and nothing amazes quite like a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. I just hope that despite the huge entertainment industry, more people are realizing the value and satisfaction of homegrown media. Not to mention that instead of listening to homogenized and carefully calculated beliefs and values, people could dodge mass media hegemony long enough to learn for themselves.

Maybe it’s because of my profession, but I see entertainment as one of the great opportunities for expression this society isn’t taking advantage of. We have the means, technology, and tools, why isn’t this second nature? Don’t we all have this incredible urge to create, tell our stories, and perform our songs?

I write this, of course, while smelling food that someone else is cooking, on a computer I didn’t assemble, in a house I didn’t build. I’m sure all of those things are just as important to other people as the aforementioned media are to me… Does that make me short-sighted? Maybe.