My book club is reading How to Wreck a Nice Beach, on the history of the vocoder. One of my compatriots DJs for CBC Radio 3, and put together this YouTube playlist of vocoder tunes:

New drum kit, new processing techniques. Still much room for improved sythesis. Thinking about just lifting samples, but there’re a million things to try first. This section would be the build-up to the first drop, and would have a 16 bar drum lead-in before it. Might have to get bigger tho, depends on the song.

The bass should be warmer, I guess. It just keeps coming out cold and evil >:)

[Update:] Here is the same arrangement, but I designed a new algorithm for generating snare timings which should be more believably human (ie, funkier):

In no particular order:

Drama

House of Pleasures

How can you go wrong with period French prostitutes? [Opening Gala, Feb 12 14:00]

Rundskop (Bullhead)

I’d like to see more crime movies that aren’t about beautiful people committing glamorous crimes. [Feb 5 14:00, Feb 7 18:45]

Midnight Son

We desperately need reimaginings of the vampire myth that aren’t Mormon sparkle faeries. [Feb 6 19:15, Feb 9 19:00]

Nuit #1

This could be a preachy, dull look at Generation Y, but I’ll listen to a lecture if it starts with a 12-minute-long gritty sex scene. [Feb 5 19:15, Feb 11 11:30]

Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)

Grizzled detectives sitting in a car at night, talking – it’s like ultra-noir. [Feb 10 21:30]

Documentary

The Redemption of General Butt Naked

I thought this Liberian warlord was fascinating before I heard he’s still alive and has converted to Christianity! [Feb 4 21:30, Feb 12 16:30]

Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression

You can’t make a straight documentary about graffiti, so like Exit Through the Gift Shop this takes a different angle by looking at people who clean up graffiti in destructive ways. [Feb 9 21:30]

Sushi: The Global Catch

Sushi is the national dish of BC, and sustainable sushi is a really important issue. [Feb 4 16:30]

A People Uncounted

Normally I avoid Holocaust movies, but the Roma are an ethnic group that I’d like to know more about. [Feb 8 18:45]

Girl Model

The modelling industry is so weird, I’m sure this will be fascinating to watch. [Feb 5 21:45]

Here’s a friend of a friend bending some circuit. This contraption won a couple grand in free equipment from Moog:

Copyright Criminals is an hour-long doc about sampling and the art thereof. Here it is in its entirety:

Some points: one) Gilbert O’Sullivan didn’t sue Biz Markie, the company to which he assigned his copyright did, two) the film should have been CC licensed — it’s something of an artfail that it’s not, three) the bit where Saul Williams talks about sampling in trip hop has been continually blowing my mind — Bjork becomes even more of a weird Icelandic half-elf, four) sampling is clearly art and making it illegal is clearly wrong-headed, if not outright racist.

Wikipedia, Reddit and other sites have been disabled today to protest some piece of legislation in some obscure banana republic. The banana republic is populous and rich, so many Internet sites get founded and hosted there. But the banana republic has a history of trying to fuck over the Internet, so all smart sites move their hosting to other countries that don’t hate freedom.

I don’t really care what’s going on in the banana republic because I’ve written it off. I wish the companies that run the Internet would simply relocate rather than annoying me with their provincial concerns. After all, you don’t see these kind of protests over the Great Firewall of China, even though that affects more people.

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” – John Gilmore

Yes, it would be very sad if the many residents of the banana republic, who share most of my culture, were not able to fully participate in the Internet. And it will be very annoying if the banana republic starts using its considerable influence to get other countries to recognize its own crazy legislation and enact similar legislation of their own. But it’s time to accept that the banana republic’s government is broken and help its current residents escape from their abusive relationship.

Don’t write your representative, move your servers to Canada or shut up already.

Today I (largely) finished The Dance Music Manual, a big textbook on how electronic dance music is produced, from math and physics through machinery and software to psychoacoustics, aesthetics, and culture:

Although both these genres are still produced and played in clubs to this day, the increased popularity of 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA or “E”) amongst clubbers inevitably resulted in new forms of trance being developed. Since this pharmaceutical stimulates serotonin levels in the brain, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to place clubbers into states of trance with tribal rhythms, and instead the melodies became more and more exotic, slowly taking precedence over every other element in the mix.

The book is hilariously written in parts — the author makes no distinction between the words “subsequently” and “consequently”, for example — and so it requires some interpretation to really understand. The included CD, while not required, is interesting listening if you want to hear tracks being built and instruments being synthesized.

It’s rare that I run into a book which is perfectly suited to my competence in a subject. Most are too simple, some are too complex. This book provided me with exactly what I needed, including the first-ever cogent argument I’ve heard against weed: since weed makes music better, don’t smoke it while learning to compose — it’ll impair your critical faculties.

I need to start working on song structure, so here’s another test track. Publish or perish.

It also includes my attempt at a simple (1st inversion) C-maj bass line with an equally-simple A-min lead chord progression. The lead is gated, Trance-style, and everything is gain pumped to hell and back. I need to work on the mix and stereo image.

[I think my music theory needs work too -- shit sounds flat.]

“Sampling Soul” is a Duke University lecture discussing Illmatic and its effects on hip hop culture.

My Facebook feed is full of links to a news article on “UnicornBooty.com” titled “Canadian Gov’t Dissolves Thousands of Same-Sex Marriages (Including Dan Savage’s)“. I am disappointed but not surprised how my progressive friends uncritically accept news that fits their worldview. At the very least, it would be nice to see them link to a Canadian news source with a bit more reputation than UnicornBooty – every major mainstream news source carried the story yesterday.

The actual issue is that two women who were married in Canada but live in the UK and the US applied for a divorce under Canada’s Divorce Act. Section 3 of the Act specifies that a Canadian province only has jurisdiction over a divorce if one of the spouses has lived there for a year. As Reddit commenters sagely explained, the purpose of this is to prevent hostile spouses from cherry-picking whichever jurisdiction’s laws will suit them better – the same way that corporations do for their legal disputes. This should be extended internationally to prevent, in particular, husbands from divorcing their wives in misogynist countries.

Presumably what actually happened in court was that a lawyer for the Department of Justice argued that Canada should not foot the bill for this couple’s legal dispute because it’s as if they weren’t married as far as any country’s divorce laws are concerned. I am disappointed but not surprised that every major mainstream news source in Canada uncritically accepted whatever their original source for this story was without reading the legislation or thinking about what actually happened.

The larger issue here is that getting married in another country can have unintended consequences and you really should talk to a lawyer first. This couple should have signed a prenuptial agreement that had some divorce mechanism specified. In order to protect Canada’s same-sex marriage tourism industry, the government have said they’re going to come up with some way to hold divorce proceedings for couples in this circumstance.

I also have a beef with the way that foreign commentators like Dan Savage criticise Canada when things like this happen. Dan: Your country wouldn’t even let you get married, and yet you choose to continue to live there; you chose to come here and get married without doing your due diligence; why does my country owe you anything?