Posted by Jerry on July 7th, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music, Technology
I’ve never quite been able to get CD-standard recordings out of my computer – until now! Yes it’s a new toy, a TASCAM US-122L – and I really wasn’t sure how it would go when I bought it based on internet reviews – via eBay. So what is this thing? It’s a device to plug your musical instrument or microphone into your computer via USB and it converts your analogue input into MIDI input.
Until now, I had been using a small four channel mixer into the mic input of the iMac. Previously, there has always been a bit of hiss or noise from the desk and effects pedal – always low, but present. This is the first time I have had truly clean signal input via the USB port with a two-channel midi interface.
In the box is the TASCAM US-122L unit, a USB cable (which powers the device as well as provides input-output) three CDs – one to install the driver, one to install Cubase lite and one to install GigaStudio3.0 – for windows machines. I was mainly interested to see how it would perform with Tracktion studio recording software – having just upgraded to Tracktion3.0.
After installing the driver on the mac, I plugged the TASCAM unit in and it lit up straight away. The device can take two inputs – and it has both jack and canon sockets. It also has a switch to provide phantom power for mics that would otherwise need a pre-amp.
There is also a headphone socket so you can hear either the input or the output to the computer – or a mix of the two. The device has almost zero lag or latency, and the sound is very clean – no noise or hiss at all!
The Tracktion studio recording software was able to take the midi input without difficulty and I was quickly able to get some nice clean recordings – so perhaps a CD is not out of the question now. Here is the whole recording studio!
Overall, the device is compact, and it performs its fairly simple function of taking your analogue instrument input and turning it into clean digital signal very well indeed.
Okay, don’t take my word for it – have a listen to my fairly average playing of Ashokan Farewell. I thoroughly recommend this device if you are thinking of recording sound on your computer.
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on July 5th, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music
I had some wonderful feedback from Frieberg-trained linguist Tamsin Sanderson on my systemic functional music schema and as a consequence have incorporated a number of amendments – this piece is developing rapidly!
I have added a component in the text on the physics of music, and on why pianos are always out of tune – and why THAT is a radical innovation for western music!
Enjoy 🙂
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on June 25th, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music, New media, Technology
Google Apps has brought Office software (docs and spreadsheets) into Web 2.0 with its browser-based editing suites. And Picasa offers photo editing and sharing. SecondLife has 3D modelling tools. Even YouTube has online video editing software, but there is still a gap.
We seem to live in such a visual society that the audio side is deeply neglected – Where is the YouTube or Picasa for musicians or podcasters? Surely the soundtrack to our lives is just as important as the visual!
Sure there are free downloadable software (such as Audacity, MutliTrackStudio, Anvil Studio and GarageBand which comes with the new Macs) for specific platforms for sound editing, but the current crop is neither browser-based nor platform-indpendent.
As the 3D web takes off I can see increasing demand for people to be able to record music, and ambient soundscapes for SecondLife and to be able to stream those sounds straight into these virtual worlds.
So here is my challenge to Google – how about developing the browser-based GarageBand [tm] for the masses?
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on June 21st, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music, Travel
Travel fiddles are not new. Dancing masters of the 17th century needed a portable instrument that could be played in homes in order to teach dancing to young ladies and gentlemen. So the problem of portability has always been an issue. In these days of air travel, a compact travel instrument is a useful item. There are several modern ‘backpackers’ guitars and mandolins, and very few backpackers fiddles or violins.
When at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London I not only paid homage to the hardanger fiddle on which mine is based, but found these delightful instruments that might well serve as the basis for a decent backpacker violin.
The first were a couple of ‘pochette’ fiddles – designed to fit both fiddle and bow into a small leather tube which could be easily carried or placed in a deep pocket in one’s coat.
The bow appears to be about one quarter size.
And this one
But possibly the most practical and one I am tempted to model is this one – more box-like and closer to modern backpacker mandolins
Something like this with a half-size bow could well fit into a carry-on bag – ideal for those jet-lagged late nights in hotel rooms – a nice quiet instrument to play a few tunes on
Now this bears further thought!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on May 22nd, 2007 — Posted in Journal, Music, New media, Theory
New media researcher Angela Thomas has written a lovely post about my semiotics of music experiment. I have drawn on MAK Halliday’s systemic functional semiotics to develop a schema for music, which can be used to analyse multimodal texts.
Interestingly there seems to have been very few attempts at developing such schemas. Angela raised a useful question in relation to my schema, namely that there is no listing for an analogue of adverbial phrase – or even adjectival phrase come to think of it. My response is two-fold. Firstly, if an adverb-function were to exist, it would probably lie in the selection of mode – major, minor, dorian etc – which would provide a sense of the manner in which a musical phrase acts/creates drama or action.
My second response is that music, along with other non-linguistic systems of signification, probably doesn’t translate directly into a linguistic model. Sure, linguistic or literary semiotics is probably the most highly developed as a means of analysing texts (however broadly defined), but I’m not entirely convinced that such a model maps all the signifying activity of a non-linguistic or multimodal text. It does, however, form a useful point of entry to any discussion of how we make meaning with non-linguistic or para-linguistic signs. Is there a grammar of music? Emphatically yes, but beyond forms of analogy, I remain uncertain as to how far one can map it directly onto a linguistic model.
But there remains the tantalising possibility that one could develop a metalanguage for analysis of music and how it functions to make meaning within a sign system.
Cheers
Jerry
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