A Different Tune

With the Australian Federal Election looming, Stephen Taberner, has hit the campaign trail with some advice for voters. Considering how hard it can be to sing outdoors, I think these "flash mob" choral performances are pretty good. Check out the original Spooky Men's Chorale version below, or on their album Tooled Up.

Well, if I wasn't convinced before I certainly am now...

Update: actually, we did vote the bastards out. The first acts of the new Rudd government were to ratify the Kyoto protocol, apologise to the Stolen Generations, and consult the people on the nation's future. Seems like a good start to me.

Norman Fairbanks has released his latest album "7 Days Microsleep". Eight tracks are available for free download from his web site. Its pure electronica - calming, mellow, yet full of motion and melody. For some reason I'm reminded of gamelan.

What's unusual about these compositions is that they are produced entirely on Yamaha's new gesture-based synth, the Tenori-On. Designed by Toshio Iwai, the Tenori-On is a hand-held device boasting a 256 pixel (16x16) LED display. By touching the display in different ways, the performer can build sequences of sounds that can be layered into complex soundscapes. The novelty of the interface is that it allows relatively complex sequences to be controlled through intuitive gestures. Unlike a traditional multitrack sequencer, the Tenori-On is a live performance instrument. This stuff is all real-time.

This video shows some of the different gestures that can be used to generate tone sequences : Score Mode, Push Mode, Changing Loop Points, Bounce Mode, and Solo Mode. Yamaha have some neat videos explaining these and other interactions here. Some technical details are available in this NIME06 paper.

I was quite intrigued by this gadget when it was released earlier this year, but I admit to being underwhelmed by some of the demo music I heard. Having listened to Norman's album a couple of times now its definitely growing on me. The standout tracks for me are "The Glam Machines Arrive" and "The Freedom Loop", but all the tracks have something to offer, sharing a unique tranquil hypnotic style. If you like this sort of thing, or are simply intrigued by the possibilities of this instrument, give "7 Days Microsleep" a try. A brief interview with Norman Fairbanks is available at Create Digital Music.

I've been using Viddler a fair bit to host videos of talks from local events such as Perth Barcamp and Podcamp. You can check out these and other offerings at my Viddler page.

For long videos Viddler offered several advantages over sites like Youtube.

• Viddler supports videos longer that 10 minutes, and up to 500mb in size.
• Viddler has timed comments, which allow you to annotate important moments in the video
• Viddler had streaming playback, which allowed you to jump to arbitrary times by clicking in the seek bar. Also, you could click on a comment and jump to that point in the playback. This is very useful for picking out highlights.

Since I originally compared Viddler and Youtube in September 2007, several things have happened. Firstly, Youtube added support for seekable playback. Download is still "progressive" but can be restarted at any point by clicking in the seek bar. Recently Viddler turned off streaming support in their player, saying that it was "expensive and unreliable". They plan to move to a progressive seek player similar to those now offered by Youtube and Google.

So while Viddler still supports timed comments, its no longer possible to jump to the comment time. This was a very useful feature and IMO a key differentiator between their offerings and the many other video sharing sites out there. Lets hope they get this fixed soon.

Update: Viddler have added progressive seek to their player, so you can now jump to any time in a video. It does seem to be more stable than the old streaming player.

Crowded House are back. They farewelled the world in 1996, and now they have reformed with a new line up : Neil Finn, Nick Seymour, Mark Hart and Matt Sherrod.

Last night Crowded House performed to a packed Supreme Court Gardens in Perth. The concert was a mixture of classic pieces, along with some of the songs from their new album "Time On Earth". The band gave a solid performance and encouraged the audience to sing along with favourites like "Fall At Your Feet", "Don't Dream It's Over", "Weather With You", "Four Seasons In One Day", and "Better Be Home Soon". Of course, these were the songs that got the biggest reaction, but folks were also singing along with the new songs too.

Many of the songs from "Time On Earth" deal with loss, and are no doubt at least partly inspired by the sad passing of drummer Paul Hester who took his own life in 2005 after a battle with depression. Songs like "Nobody Wants To", "You're The One to Make Me Cry", "People Are Like Suns", and "Silent House" reflect on the transience of life. While not popular themes in pop music these are things which eventually we will all experience. It's great to see someone prepared to tackle them head on. On the night Neil said in his introduction to "Nobody Wants To":

"We want to sing about everything. There are no no-go zones with Crowded House. We'll sing about anything or anyone or anytime, anyhow"

That's one of the things I love about Neil Finn as a songwriter. He's not afraid to write about whatever is on his mind, no matter what that is. People respect that, because it comes across as honesty and openness. There's a little touch of insanity there too ("Hey don't look now but there goes God with his sexy pants and his sausage dog"...WTF?) but that adds to the general level of mayhem - there's nothing worse than predictability. There are definitely niches in rock that have become very manufactured and formulaic. Crowded House provides a refreshing alternative to this trend.

The evening was peppered with moments of musical mischief. Mark gave a brief rendition of "Oh Susannah" on the harmonica before cranking up "There Goes God". Also fun was a lead break on the melodica in "Don't Dream It's Over". Neil introduced "When You Come" with the line "This song is not about sex, or maybe..." which of course just confirmed what I had always suspected. At one point, Nick Seymour chased onto the stage a small pack of greyhounds in red racing jackets. This was a great absurdist moment, but also a set-up for the line "Nick Seymour, Best in Breed". A highlight for me was the juxtaposition of two of my favourite songs: "Distant Sun" and "People Are Like Suns". During the final number "Pineapple Head" a "half naked man" climbed onto the stage only to be escorted away by security guards. Ever the showman, Neil worked it into the chorus so seamlessly that I was left wondering if the whole thing had been staged.

(Download 1Mb) Half Naked Man On The Stage
(Download 2Mb) Half Naked Man On The Stage (extended with entire chorus)
Recorded in glorious 8Khz mono on my cell phone.

Here is the set list from the night. I for one enjoyed not just the songs but the energy and humour.

Great work guys! I hope to see you back some time soon.

1. Private Universe
2. Mean To Me
3. Don't Stop Now
4. Fall At Your Feet
5. Everything is Good For You
6. You're the One to Make me Cry
7. Nobody Wants To
8. When you Come
9. Silent House
10. There Goes God
11. Don't Dream It's Over
12. People are like Suns
13. Walked Her Way Down
14. Distant Sun
15. Weather With You

1st encore

1. Locked Out
2. Something So Strong

2nd encore

1. Fingers of Love
2. Four Seasons in one day
3. Better be home soon

3rd encore

1. World Where You Live
2. Pineapple Head

You've been to podcamp. You've watched the videos, but you just can't get enough? Want to take it home on your 'pod?

Here are the audio tracks from my Perth Podcamp 2007 videos. Each file is encoded as MP3, 22Khz, 64Kbps. There are often comments and questions from people in the room, so I've made them stereo to help you localise the speaker.

Click on the "+" widget to listen on-line, or use the Download link to save the MP3 files (right-click and "Save Link As..").

The Blog Session (Download 23Mb)
Kathryn Greenhill gives some ideas on where to get your "Blog Fodder", and Tiang Cheng presents an introduction to VideoBlogging.

Podcasting in/as Education (Download 24Mb)
Tama Leaver and Sue Waters : Exploring the role of podcasting in education, not just the 'record and spread existing content' but also how we can engage students by getting them podcasting, too! Sue likes to walk around, so she's not always on camera.

The social network in your pocket (Download 28Mb)
Nick Cowie looks at mobile devices and social networking.

Social Media and the Federal Election (Download 18Mb)
Stilgherrian talks about the Australian federal election on social media. Unfortunately, I lost the end of the talk when the camera battery went flat.

For a list of other podcamp podcasts, check out the lists by Mike Seyfang or Richard Giles.

I'm fine for you to remix these tracks as you like, but please check first with the presenters for permission.