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Archive for the Video Category

Synthesized Network Idents

Posted by Scott

A small collection of Network Identifications from the 60’s-80’s. I always loved the synthesizer work on these and the mechanical video effects are something you just can’t fake. The second one down is the OEPBS (Oregon PBS) sign off from the 80’s. The beginning is just the standard PBS ident, but watch until 0:35 and you’ll seen their own amazing logo animation complete with warbling analog synth melody.

This has me feeling a bit dated, I remember vividly each of these (with the exception of the Oregon PBS Ident).

Elliott Smith: Angeles Video

Posted by Scott

Here’s an incredible video of Elliott Smith apparently recording Angeles live in a living room. Amazing that they’re getting such great sound from one mic picking up both the guitar and the vocals. I use 3 mics just to capture one acoustic guitar, which might be overkill. I have been experimenting with mic’ing drums using just one condenser room mic placed at a good distance and a dynamic on the bottom of the snare only with decent results. (thanks to Dusty Brown for that technique)

Fischerspooner

Posted by Scott

fischerspooner1 FischerSpooner

I’ve been meaning to post something about Fischerspooner for a while, they’re definitely one of my favorite electronic bands. They also have a very good visual sensibility with a lot of great design / imagery surrounding their releases. The top image is from their latest album, the middle is Casey Spooner, and the last is the video for Fischerspooner’s cover of Wire’s classic The 15th. Certainly my favorite FS song. Since Youtube sound quality is terrible, I’ve posted the MP3 itself below.

Fischerspooner – The 15th

[audio:15th.mp3]

Departure: Toronto

Posted by Scott

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Leaving early a.m. this morning so spent the night getting prepped and packed for Toronto. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking at FITC and playing a couple live shows. For the live stuff I’ll be doing an all new visuals set using a new piece of software I’ve completely fallen in love with. It’s the most enjoyable app I’ve come across, maybe ever. It’s a modular video app called VDMX and it blows the doors off anything I’ve ever used for the purposes of live video. You can essentially design the way it works to your liking, you design the interface and the functionality. There’s a bit of a learning curve but once you get over that you start to realize how powerful it can be. At $300 it’s not super cheap, but considering the feature set and functionality it’s well worth it. It can do quartz composer effects and blending modes all in real-time. 

I am using a Novation Remote SL and footpedals to control most of the parameters of the video portion, and a the same Novation with split parameters to control another laptop running Ableton Live. I’m also routing a set of audio outputs from Live to VDMX which then analyzes the incoming sound and modulates various parameters based on the amplitude of selected frequency ranges. Somehow VDMX is able to do this all in real time, I’m still not quite sure how.

There’s a show Saturday and Sunday night, I’m hoping to video tape the show on Sunday night at the Drake but it remains to be seen if we can track down someone to tape it on short notice. If you or anyone you know has proper video equipment and some skills to go along with it, let me know.

Les Professionales

Posted by Scott

Air-Premiers_Symptomes-Frontal
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Air are, of course, one of the better bands to come around in the past 20 years. They blessed us with 3 albums full of some the best synth work ever recorded (I don’t particularly care for most of their latter day work). My favorite album is a collection of singles released between 1995 and 1997 entitled Premiers Symptômes. Words can’t describe this, so just have a listen. I am sure most of you have heard this album, but it’s so good I thought it warranted a post even 11 years after the fact. And the album cover is so amazing, it should get a post all to itself

Also, click the live shot below the cover for a very cool short documentary entitled Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing: A Film About Air on Tour: Soundcheck, New York via Pitchfork.tv.

Air – Les Professionales

[audio:air.mp3]