A few weeks ago, Scott gave a lecture to my fellow Academy of Art students. The talk was part of the Designspeak lecture series and was open to students and faculty (and 20 lucky blog readers). The room was jam packed, with a bunch of people even crammed in on the floor. The talk covered a wide range of topics: early influences, current design process, Tycho, the blog, and much more. We even got a glimpse of the first poster Scott ever designed!
The lecture was about 1.5 hours long, with a 30 minute Q&A at the end. In addition to the Academy film crew, I was on hand with my 5DMKII to capture some of the evening. Given the massive file size, and limited continuous shot duration on the 5D, I only recorded sporadically, and wasn’t able to capture everything I would have liked. I shot until my memory card filled up and was able to capture a total of 30 minutes of the talk. I selected the shots you see in the video above from this sample.
As I said in my intro that night, it would be hard for me to convey how much I’ve learned from Scott over these last two years interning at the studio. I consider myself enrolled in two design schools (Scott’s, and the Academy) and it was really exciting for me to see these two worlds combined. I’m very glad that everyone at the Academy was able to get a glimpse into Scott’s world and I’m also really excited now to be able to show you all at least a little bit of the talk. If you haven’t been fortunate enough to see one of the talks in person, I highly suggest you make that happen (I think Toronto is your next opportunity). In the meantime, hopefully this video will tide you over.
Recording the talk was another great test run with the 5D and I learn something new each time I take it out. This time, audio was the main issue as I wasn’t able to find a suitable solution before the talk. What you hear through most of video was from the Academy microphone — at the end is what it sounds like off the internal mic on the 5D. Basically the on camera mic is completely useless. It helps for syncing external audio to the video, but that’s about it. For future excursions I am definitely going to look into some form of either a mounted shotgun mic or wireless LAV.
We’ve had the “Random Nostalgia” category on this blog for a while, but I think this is the first time a post has truly fit the bill. I was searching around my hard drive last night and stumbled upon this gem from my past, the photo you see above (sorry for the poor quality, I can’t find the original photo I scanned this from). I’m not quite sure, but this is probably from sometime around mid-1999 in Sacramento. This was the firs time I assembled what I would consider a proper studio, although it was just my bedroom (you can see the futon folded up in the right corner). I think before this I had a Roland MC-303 and SP-202 set up on a dresser in the corner so this was a big step up from that. This was also when I started using a computer to record; I had previously recorded everything into an ASR-X Pro sampler which could handle about 6 minutes of audio. I would then record the outputs of that to Minidiscs (still have a huge box of those I need to sift through).
This was before I really started designing but if you look closely you can catch one of my very early visual influences on the left wall. I rescued that tapestry thing from a dumpster; it depicts a waterfall made of rainbows. Pretty bad I know, but looking back I realize that color scheme and subject matter informed a lot of my earlier work. Not sure what happened to it, must have lost it in a subsequent move. The same goes for the other stuff, the only things I still have around are the computer keyboard, the grey box in the stereo cabinet and the wooden table in the foreground. I gave the keyboard stand to Dusty Brown and I saw it at the show in Sacramento this weekend, nice to know it’s still alive and well with the same Renthal sticker on it. As for the other stuff, it was either sold on eBay or junked (the milk crates that are holding up the desk, for example). Here’s a kit list of what I can make out from the picture:
– ASRX-Pro Sampler / Sound Module. Used this to make Science of Patterns a few years later.
– Roland JP-8000 Synthesizer.
– E-MU Orbit Sound Module (don’t ask why I owned this)
– Yamaha Stereo EQ
– Gemini 4-channel DJ mixer
– Sony MD recorder
Crazy story about the JP-8000, I put it on eBay about a year after this shot was taken. The winner of the auction was from the area so he came out to pick it up. It turned out to be Shaun Lopez, we ended up becoming friends and he still does mixing work on my tracks today (Daydream, Adrift, Disconnect to name a few).
It’s finally time to announce the Grand Prize Winner in the Holiday Giveaway. The Grand Prize includes the following:
· One copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium Mac (US$1,799 Value)
· One ISO50 Studio Giclee print of Choice in 18″ wide format
· One ISO50 shirt of choice
· Tycho MP3 Collection
I’m very pleased to announce that I’ll be playing at this year’s Sacramento Electronica Music Festival. I’m shouldn’t really be playing shows right now as the album’s due date is rapidly approaching, but I can never pass up an opportunity to play a show in my home town. There are lots of great names on the bill including Dusty Brown, who I’ll be playing some songs with. All in all it’s shaping up to be quite an experience: three days of great music for $10, I’m pretty sure you can’t beat that. And if you’re from the bay area, try to make the drive, it’s only 90 minutes and as you’ll see there’s something about live shows in Sacramento you don’t often get out here.
And for those who know their Sacramento electronic music history, you might notice that this is a partial Command Collective reunion of sorts. With the exception of Chachi Jones, all the original members will be playing during the festival: Dusty Brown, Tha Fruitbat, Lifeliner (aka Park Avenue), and myself.
Tycho: Saturday, Jan. 30th, 2010 – 11:30 PM
Festival: January 28, 2010 9:00 PM – Jan. 31, 2010 2:00 AM
With a copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium on the line the stakes are high for second prize in the Holiday Giveaway. The lucky winner takes home one copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium Mac (US$1,799 Value), one ISO50 shirt of choice, the Tycho Coastal Brake 12″, and a Tycho MP3 Collection.
So without further ado, drumroll please… The second prize winner for the 2009 Holiday Giveaway is Jared Pendergraft. Congratulations Jared, we’ve emailed you at the address you provided. If you do not receive an email in the next couple days please contact us with an alternate email address.
We still have another copy of Adobe CS4 Design Premium and ISO50 prints and shirts to giveaway so be sure to enter now before the final winner is picked. Just make any purchase at the ISO50 Shop to be automatically entered to win, or you may enter at the Holiday Giveaway Page.
We still have two copies of Adobe CS4 Design Premium and lots of ISO50 prints and shirts to giveaway so be sure to enter now before the rest of the winners are picked. Just make any purchase at the ISO50 Shop to be automatically entered to win, or you may enter at the original post.
For those of you who listen to a lot of the songs here on the blog this should make your lives a lot easier. We’ve added a new audio player to the site for individual music posts which supports playlists. This means that you can just hit play and let them go without having to click each song individually. The new system is based off the same JWPlayer framework as the normal ISO50 Playlist player (top of the center column) but it will now be for individual posts as well. We will continue to update the main Playlist each month or so, but you can think of this as a new mini playlist each day. The skin is just temporary as I refine it, but all the core functionality should be there.
