Tonight is the final show of the Tycho tour! We’re ending off with a bang at the Doug Fir and Jakub will be joining us playing a set as Heathered Pearls. To celebrate we’re giving away a pair of tickets to the show. Just drop a comment here or on the Tycho Facebook Page answering the following question: What was the name of the first Tycho release?
IMPORTANT: Only enter if you live near Portland and intend to go to the show tonight. Thanks and good luck!
I’ve been waiting for a long time for this show and it’s finally here. Wedsnesday will be the first Tycho show in Boulder, CO and we’re all really excited. So excited that I created a poster specifically for the show. This also marks the first time I’ve designed a print from start to finish on the road (been out here for a few weeks now). The show will be with The Album Leaf at The Fox Theater this Wednesday, September 26th, 2012. Details and tickets here, hope to see you out!
We’re in the home stretch of our Fall Tour with only a handful of dates left. This will likely be the last full Tycho tour for a while as I plan to head back to the studio to work on new material. Thanks to everyone who’s made this past year so special, we’ve had an incredible time travelling around seeing so many wonderful people and places. Hope to see you all again soon!
Been a great run so far out here, heading in to the home stretch. We’re playing The Trocadero in Philadelphia with The Album Leaf this Saturday and have a couple of tickets up for grabs. Email aegphillycontests [at] aeglive.com with your first/last name and subject line TYCHO for a chance to win.
Just rolled in to Charlottesville for the show tonight at The Jefferson Theater, see you soon!
I’ve been on the road for the Tycho Summer Tour for the past few weeks and it’s been a great trip. Met a lot of great people and played for some incredible audiences. We’ve finally reached the East Coast (Portland, ME show tonight!) and we’ll end up in NYC for the Webster Hall show this Saturday, July 14th. I’ve never been to Webster Hall but I’ve heard great things so really excited for this one. If you caught the last couple shows at Music Hall of Williamsburg I’ve got some new stuff lined up for this one. New visuals, new lighting, and a new song. Can’t wait to bring it all to Webster; from the pictures I saw it looks like a great space.
Tomorrow we’ll also be playing a late-night (2:45-4am) set at Camp Bisco; really looking forward to that one.
Some tickets to the Webster Hall show are still available, get yours here.
To cap off our European tour, our friends at Miscelanea in Barcelona will be hosting us for a small show this Thursday (1-3-12). Only 80 spots available! We’ll have a lot of poster prints and Tycho vinyl there as well. Hope to see you there…
Visuals are a big part of the Tycho live show and I’m often asked how they were created and presented in a live setting. The answer is VDMX, a modular video performance platform. For those of you familiar with video editing / effecting, you could think of it as a stripped down, real-time version of After Effects where every parameter is controllable via various protocols (MIDI, OSC) and even by other parameters. It can mix multiple sources using blending modes like multiply and color burn all while utilizing Quartz Composer effects.
I’ve been using VDMX for a few years now and it’s become one of those tools that I can’t live without. Because it’s modular, VDMX’s interface can be arranged in any way you prefer. I personally use three video decks with and effects bin on each and then a master effects bin. I trigger clips and modulate parameter via MIDI over IP from Reaper running on a Macbook Pro w/ a Vertex 3 MAX IOPS drive (VDMX eats data bandwidth alive!).
VDMX is an incredibly deep and flexible application which I have yet to see any real limitation to. The workflow and functionality is so abstract that there are myriad ways to accomplish pretty much anything you can think of. And therein lies the only real problem I can find with VDMX; the flexibility and modularity afforded by the abstract way in which the application functions comes at the expense of usability. The learning curve is very steep and many of the initial concepts are a little tough to wrap your head around. Vidvox (the developers of VDMX) have put together some great tutorial videos which can help move the learning process along.
Thankfully a new version is out, and with it come some very helpful additions and changes. VDMX 5 is an entirely new program, written from the ground up. For those coming from older versions a lot of the way VDMX works will feel familiar. But you’ll quickly notice that some subtle changes in workflow make a big difference. I just started learning the new version during this current tour and it was pretty straight forward.
VDMX, while certainly not geared toward the casual user, is one of those apps that will allow you to grow into it. The relatively steep learning curve will pay off pretty quickly when you realize just what it’s capable of.
We’re wrapping up the Little Dragon / Tycho tour tomorrow night in Tampa (Tuesday, Oct. 25th). It’s been an incredible tour, we started out up in Toronto and made our way down through the south. It was our first time playing a lot of these cities and we were amazed by the warm reception we got from everyone. We’ll definitely be back very soon with the full show (visuals etc.)
We’re driving from Orlando to Tampa right now, can’t wait to get back out there for the first time with the live band. We have the day off so going to try and get some sun and swimming in today.
You can purchase tickets for the Tampa show here or you can enter to win some here.
See you out there!
Photo from Music Hall of Williamsburg show by Every.Seven
