Yey! I'm really looking forward to this little gem, the Nintendo DS-10 synthesizer by Korg.

CNET Asia has more info on the release, July 24th Japan, and more specs.

Sometimes I find myself doodling mindlessly on synths just to relax, GMM meditation time. Having a super-tiny, super-portable synth to whip up and doodle with anytime anyplace, can turn super-boring plane trips into meditative super-bliss.

I am sorting out my new laptop-based life, rendering out my old projects from the desktop G5. All of my work from the last 4 years to be archived.

Hopefully most projects will load on future setups when/if needed, but hard experience whisper in my ear; there will always be some small glitch screwing things up. For certain, I do not have intel versions of each and every plugin I've ever used, in addition I would take this opportunity to trim down my plugin mess.

Fortunately for me, Logic has an "Export all tracks", rendering down each track of a project to separate audio files. It does not render busses (why not, Gerhard?), but this should work as a track based backup, in case a plugin or setting doesn't carry over into the future.

Personally, I would like to take the opportunity and label this kind of work INCREDIBORING.

Home.

I'm moving out of my the Uncanny Labs, reducing my physical footprint to a beautiful, portable cloud-based existence.

I spent all weekend sorting, trashing and packing up all the crap I hoarded over the years. My god, there is so much stuff. I probably have enough USB cables to build an elastic Eiffel Tower.

Luckily I've been able to sell or give away most of the surplus furniture, gear and other peculiatiries, but still some hardware left. I'm planning to sell it, just need some time to render out old projects for digital archiving.

Tomorrow is moving day, renting a van, I'm storing the live show equipment and some hardware at a storage facility, the rest goes to recycling.

I'm really looking forward to get rid of everything.

I have been banging my head against an impregnable wall of evil custom Japanese Playstation train controller systems. I have been trying to figure out and hack my Taito train controllers, which I harvested from a dubious Hong Kong retailer for the Ugress live shows. The lever sends out a matrix of mysterious dimensions, instead of the rather practical, obvious and easily translatable 0-255 PS2 controller values.

I needed über-expertise.

Today I spent a few hours at BEK with super crazy mad über genius Trond Lossius, Max/MSP and overall DSP-MIDI-audio-musical computer expert. It didn't take him long to decode and reverse engineer the secret behind the controller system.

He discovered the controller sends out a proprietary binary system at the upper half of the lever, with multiple movement indicators between each step, and a less chaotic and less binary, but still predictable and controllable system at the lower half. He also built bit-shifting translators in Max/MSP to decode the system into usable information in realtime, filtering out the less important data, all the way while explaining and tutoring to me how everything worked and why/how we did certain things.

I was awestruck not only by his solution but also by his approach. My own strategy was based on a few repeating patterns I had noticed and could to rely on, and then translating these to MIDI CC messages, then further interpolating between them in Max/MSP, before routing the CC signal into my live audio manipulations.

But Trond dived into the messages, found patterns, built systems and translators to visualize and decode the system, and progressively learned more and more, at some point recognizing a binary system hidden within the myriad of messages, then building more systems to evaluate and report the discoveries. Finally translating the Taito controller system into simple, scalable integer numbers, ready for me to utilize for my world domination plans.

When you meet and experience people like Mr Lossius, it feels like meeting an inspirational part of the universe. Largely ignored and excluded by todays reality-TV-infected world. People with incredible brains, knowledge, with endless approaches and patience, people wanting to investigate, understand and decode. People asking why, because they want to figure it out, and nothing more. I am not only immensely grateful for a functional solution to my Taito controller, but for experiencing Trond, his approach and engineering. Trond helped me because he could.

Knowledge, science and engineering FTW.

I never thought I would blog a poster. But The Dark Knight poster, in lack of a less contemporary word suitable to express my position in a sophisticated way, is EPIC.

Legends, Mr Wayne.

Trailer, rumouredly, is out in four days.

I am writing like crazy on the Gaffa application marketing plan, everywhere and anywhere and allthetime. Currently at 10 pages and featuring an astonishing lack of coherence. My brain is not wired for this stuff.

Right now I've crashed down and installed my nomad office in my usual corner (the one with power outlets) at my favorite Bergen place, Kung Fu.

Retro 60ies martial arts bar-lounge, booths, 70ies funk reggae vinyl soundtracks pumping, easy atmosphere and incredible Thai food. Hearts.

Hopefully the excellent fu vibes carry on over to my marketing plan.

Every day this week I spend a few hours at BEK, learning Max/MSP kung/fu from guru genius Trond Lossius.

The first few days was slightly basic, and I knew most of the stuff. Still nice to learn it from another angle than my usual skim-the-manual-hack-away-it-untill-it-works-or-explodes approach.

Sometime tonight Max/MSP 5 is out, I saw a preview of this when we played Minneapolis earlier this spring, it looks great. I am very excited. We're diving into this freshest of fresh immediately, heading deeper into adventurous DSP and MSP territory.

CC Records / Christer Falck has initiated a mega pack of cover tracks in celebration of Prince's 60th birthday this summer. 80 Norwegian artists, including yours truly, have contributed personal renditions of the man's musical repetoire. The album will be released on his birthday.

I am proud and thrilled to be the only artist representing the Batman soundtrack. I actually wrote the core of the track in Minneapolis, Prince's home town during the Spark Festival stay. I finished the cover during a few all-nighters last week, both me and Christer happy how it turned out. 

Now the whole project is on thin ice with a torch burner as lifeline. Prince and/or his evil no-fun publisher suddenly wants to stop it dead. Been all over the Norwegian press the last few days.

Not sure what happens now. I know Christer, the biggest Prince fan in the world, is working desperately to solve it. Hopefully it works out, if not somebody will certainly be considered The Artist Presently Known Ass Hole.

This coming week I'm attending a week course on Max/MSP hosted by BEK (Bergen Center for Electronic Arts). A bunch of electronic artists in a room with laptops, tutored by Norwegian electronic multimedia super genius Trond Lossius. It's like going back to school, just exceptionally cooler.

My endeavors in Max/MSP so far has been hacky at best. I have rudimentary programming skills, but if someone was to write a poem of my graphical modular music technology software skills, they would have to come up with a word that rhymes with MacGyver.

For example I had to cook up a patch to translate the Taito train controller signals from a matrix of PS2 button signals to continuous MIDI CC messages - the patch is a complete mess, so is my understanding of it all, and in addition it doesn't work at all the way I intended. MacGyverism only gets you so far - when building a house to live in, at some point you need proper skills beyond duct tape. (Or just check in to a hotel, which is my usual way of establishing my domestic routines.)

Hopefully this next week will make me Speed Racer of Max/MSP.

Talking Picture - The Road To Ruin. All the dialogue has been cut out from this 1934 movie, turning the film into a jump-cutting picture-poem of glitch communication.

Meditation for Generation MTV.

Synopsis lifted from Undergroundfilm.com:

A re-working of a 1934 cautionary picture in which a young girl gets involved with a crowd that smokes marijuana, drinks and has sex. She winds up an alcoholic, pregnant drug addict and is forced to get an abortion. In this version, a very simple manipulation has been enacted upon the film.

By restricting the communicative abilities of the film, the ways in which meaning is drawn from a movie is addressed. The restriction also affects the sensationalist nature of the original work, drawing the viewer out of the somewhat passive viewing experience colored by camp or nostalgia, and into a more intimate relationship with the film and its characters.

(Via Waxy.)

Just a quick journal note; current status is a complete mess of everything. Mogulness is not a bed of roses, it is more like calculus without numbers. (I don't know what that means.)

Status. 

I am writing a complete international marketing plan for the Gaffa music video application. Deadline Apr 28th. By complete I mean a marketing plan at a professional business level, shitloads of pages, market analyzes, SWOTs, GANTTs, competition scenario, budgets, long term strategic plans, artist vision, geographical strategies, and it's all a mess. I know this is important, and very helpful, and a proper music video budget would be awesome right now. But this financial strategic way of thinking is feeding my cynicism and killing my soul.

I am moving out of my current studio, looking everywhere for a new space, not just for me, and simultaneously selling off all the crap I've been hoarding over the years. This is an administrative and logistical nightmare. I had no idea selling off a few items would be so much work. Note to self: Never start a shop.

I am sampling all my hardware synths, rendering out old projects, to get rid of hardware. This takes time, and of course things that worked perfectly for 5 years, start behaving crazy mad at the least convenient moment. Note to self: No more hardware.

My to-journalize list is longer than the Chinese wall. I would like to journalize billions of amazing things like this and this and this.

The Ugress social network cloud presence is lagging behind because I haven't got time to keep 20-something profiles updated around the clouds around the clock. (Why isn't someone providing a syndication service?) The internal webs are due for an update and some of them are almost finished. But as usual when programming, the last 10% is equal to the first 90% when it comes to workload. Slowly coming along. Note to self: Outsource.

There is a music video coming up really soon. Administrative efforts surrounding it. And some of the new webs should be ready for the release.

I am working on two regular production gigs, writing music for films. I need cash to start paying off debts for the Unicorn release period - I didn't have time to work in cash those months, and lived on loans and credit cards. Payback time. Also, the merch is sold out, and I need fundings to purchase a new and bigger batch with more options.

I am working with BRAK helping them setting up their new digital online strategies and website. This is crazy fun and I love it - but it turns out, like everything else, to be much more work than my horrible planning skills can fathom beforehand.

I am trying to set up live gigs in Norway this spring. This turns out to be much more work than I intended. I totally love playing live, we have an insane show, and it is a serious revenue source, but I hate doing all the planning and booking and organizing. Might have to postpone touring until I find someone to help me on this.

I am working on a Prince cover track which is seriously overdue, but the producer is very understanding and helpful. We both think the track has great potential so we're really trying to find a way and time to finish it.

Finally, I am working on an upcoming release, and I can't say more than that yet, but the few seconds I have free every now and then, is spent creating for this. And those few seconds of new tones, and a few trips in the woods, is what saves my soul.

And all of these undertakings are currently in the "WTF now?" stage.

Conclusion. I have NO idea how much time and energy is needed for anything. In fact, I consistently de-estimate in opposite direction of reality, how much I can, could or should do.

Thursday was the annual BRAK Selvangivelseskurs (tax return seminar), held by accountant Kristoffer Vassdal and Ivar Peersen (Enslaved). Musicians in Norway usually register as small business enterprises, and need to file tax report for the business unit, and additional papers besides the regular tax return form.

Most musicians are using accountants, but some of us tax-auteurs prefer to spend a few agonizing days in late May, desperately sorting, filing and calculating our sexy numbers. Mr Vassdal and Mr Peersen elegantly guided us through relevant regulations and smart tips, showing what we can, should, could and shouldn't do and don't.

I am not looking forward to those May Days Of Tax, but I like to have complete control and knowledge about my own business. With these tips at least some parts will go smoother.

This is music 2.0; electronic groove scientists taking tax return lessons from genius international metal stars.

Sometimes I just fall in love with things based on appearance and what I imagine I could do with it.

The MIDI Parasite, featured at Music Thing today, catched my attention like steam catches boiling water. I briefly re-informatize from the MT post that this is custom built for a guitar, and more information is available.

Don't care. Want.

I uploaded a bunch of pics and a few videos from the Ugress live show at TV2 Artistgalla at Flickr.

Flickr just opened for video today, with a slightly different take than Youtube. Their philosophy is "long photos", a limit of 90 seconds. I really like that, looks good to use for publishing my N95 clips.