Cafe Mooset is a small restaurant and venue in the town of Bloomsburg, PA. During the Flood of 2011, the property was damaged and the shop was forced to close. Since then Annie Clark, Ralph Hinkle, Donna Schaffer have worked hard to bring their place back for the community.

On Saturday February 18, 2012, a reopening celebration was held. Performers from the Local Music Collective were on hand to provide entertainment. These are some of the highlights. Special thanks to my brother Justin for helping capture the afternoon. Click “Show Info” for info on the acts.

Cafe Mooset is at the Marketplace 95 East Tenth Street, Bloomsburg, PA

The Akai presets below are nothing more than text files with a string of numbers. If you were a real geek, you could probably do all of this with Excel. To try what I have created, download the TXT file, remove the .TXT extension, and load into the Akai LPD8 via their provided patch librarian. Once all 4 are loaded, use the red Program button to change the Preset. This can be done within the body of a song that is playing back, but only four can be used at a time. Each Reason device will need its own preset to make best use of all the controls. I have chosen to focus on Kong and Redrum since my goal was to have more control for live improv.

JDPreset1_KongA_ch1_improved
LPD8 Pads assigned to Kong 1-8. Knobs assigned to Volume of same pads (using KPD8 Pad 5 to Knob 1 and so on, so it is easy to see)

JDPreset2_KongB_ch1_improved
LPD8 Pads assigned to Kong 9-16. Knobs assigned to Volume of same pads (using LPD8 Pad 5 to Knob 1 and so on, so it is easy to see)

Knobs assigned to Volume of same pads. Highlight pad to see volume change (or toggle the control that shows you volume/tone for all pads).

Toggle the volume for all pads to see values change.

Note: There is probably a lot more you can do with the Kong controls. I spent most of my time on Redrum because that is where I had the most fun. Likely there will be more to come.

JDPreset3_RedrumVol_ch1_improved
Pads assigned to drums 1-8 of Redrum
Knobs assigned to Volume (using KPD8 Pad 5 to Knob 1 and so on, so it is easy to see)
Pad 1 is toggle to turn off pattern with CC 92
CC all pads 92 for now.

JDPreset4_RedrumPitch_ch1_improved
Pads assigned to drums 1-8 of Redrum
Knobs assigned to Pitch (using KPD8 Pad 5 to Knob 1 and so on, so it is easy to see)
NO toggle for now.
CC all pads 92 for now.

Note: Program Change that used to run some transport functions no longer works using this method. Still working that out, but not quite as critical. Remember – remove the entire .TXT extension (not sure they will work otherwise). No warranties folks. I am posting these to help you make music instead of spending your time programming… this is going to be a fun weekend now that this is out of the way!

How the idea started…

After being a closet electro musician and experimentalist for many years, and after attending electro-music festivals in 2010 and 2011, I decided it was time to find somewhere locally to further explore this side of my creativity. Turning to the Interwebs, I found what I *thought* was a jam session in Carlisle, PA….  still a bit of a jaunt, but worth checking out.

To my dismay, further research showed that what I had actually come across was a perfect event… but it was a different Carlisle, in England. Their Carlisle was described as a “small northern city of 200,000 people approx” by Barry, the organizer. Much bigger than Bloomsburg. Through a few discussions with Barry, it became clear that the only way this was going to happen closer to home was if I organized it myself.

So, this is about making things happen. Even without all of those 200,000 people to draw from.

Closet sound artists in the Bloomsburg Area who are interested in electronic or experimental music are encouraged to contact me here or on Facebook to discuss the forming of a local collective that will explore many electro and experimental styles that otherwise do not seem to see the light of day (or get much respect) in our area.

I already have interest from a local venue willing to host workshops starting this Spring. So now we just need people to come out of the woodwork, and step up to the challenge. Full details – as they become available – can be found here.

This was composed this evening, 1/13/12. All sound sources except the bass drum were created from objects in my desk (see picture). The objects included:
- Arabic bowl from Ebay
- Small allen wrench from my bass guitar (used to strike the bowl)
- Rubber band type cable tie
- Velcro cable tie
- Bronze or Brass pick from our trip to Santa Fe, NM
- Copper guitar pick from same trip
- Glass pill bottle with thumbtacks
All sounds were recorded with Reason 6 using a Sennheiser e835 microphone, with only a bit of ping-pong reverb and compression added.

Dog Assassin: The Musical

Thu 3/22 - 7:30 PM
Fri 3/23 - 7:30 PM
Sat 3/24 - 7:30 PM
Sun 3/25 -2:00 PM

Tickets: Regular $12
Students/Seniors $6

Ferguson Theatre, Pitt Greensburg
Greensburg, PA

DIRECTIONS - Campus Map

DogAssassinPoster2011-2012

Funded in part through New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections program.

Robert Dorschel - Performing at EM2010

Robert Dorschel is one of the many friends that I made at Electro-music 2010, a festival dedicated to electronic music. Ironically, while most of the festival was electrified, it was during the acoustic jams that we really got to talking. Robert brought his melodica and Zen drum, which added some great textures to everything from folk tunes to 8os covers. Based out of Syracuse, Robert plays a number of instruments, but concentrates mostly on synths and Logic Pro and has an ear for down tempo ethereal ambient music. We stayed in touch after the 2010 event, and put together a (largely improvised) set for EM2011 as RodoJerde. We got an invitation to play in Egypt, so I guess that is good!

It’s rather unusual for me to work with a collaborator that I do not already know for many years, but Robert and I seemed to relate on many levels philosophically. I think we were both at points in our lives where it was time to just set aside any preconceived ideas of perfection and just see what happens. This has been liberating because neither one of us are trying to prove anything. We continue to swap files and ideas via Skype and DropBox. Robert just started a new venture for 2012 that he calls Ditty A Day 2012 where he assigns himself the task of posting something new every day. We’re still formulating our next experiment, but it will be fun to see what happens this year.

Matt Homiak - Man of the Bass

{This is the first in a series of short entries about fellow collaborators that you will be hearing more about in the coming year.}

Matt and I met while attending classes at PSU Hazleton. He was working on his BA right out of high school. I was there in a two-year Associate program for business, after taking a year off from high school to work. I was still very much exploring the completely acoustic, folk singer-songwriter path, while Matt was (and still is) into funk, various world musics and ambient. In many ways we could not have been much different. Before long we met in an honors writing class, which encouraged group discussion and debate. Through that class we learned that we had a lot in common philosophically. Soon we began to talk music and, we’ll… that was it.

Matt is largely responsible for my expanded listening via artists like Dan Lanois, Jai Uttal, and Bill Laswell. We had a couple short-lived projects in NEPA, including some live shows and clandestine recording sessions both at home and at Lebanon Valley College. Matt played two tracks on my first album, Mandala, but before long our respective personal lives and careers took us into separate directions. For most of the 2000s, we remained out of touch.

Now based in Pittsburgh, and recently graduated from University of Phoenix with a multimedia degree, Matt plays with the Sun Kings on weekends, and occasionally other groups. We reconnected online a little while back when he was still taking classes, working and playing in a band. Based on those discussions, and some brief meetings since, we recognized it was far too long since we had done music together. So we’re slowly putting together some tracks via DropBox and our respective home studios. Watch this space!

L'Etrange Mr Whinster

This was a very good year for music. So much so that listening to all this stuff is sometimes a major distraction when trying to focus on one’s own work as an artist. Still, it’s good to know that there is such a variety of good stuff out there, both on and off of pop radio (which I rarely, if ever, listen to these days).

So here are my 2011 Album Picks, in no particular order:

Black Keys – El Camino
Björk - Biophilia
Ry Cooder – Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
Munto Valdo – One & The Many
Paul Simon – So Beautiful or So What
Tom Waits – Bad As Me
Death Cab for Cutie – Codes And Keys
Brian Eno – Drums Between the Bells
Yo-Yo Ma – The Goat Rodeo Sessions
Tamikrest – Toumastin
TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
Social Distortion – Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes
Matisyahu – Live at Stubb’s Vol.II
REM – Collapse Into Now
My Morning Jacket – Circuital
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare, Vol. 2: Judges

Honorable mentions only because I heard just parts of these and didn’t get to purchase the full albums:

Florence and the Machine – Ceremonials
Tinariwen – Tassili
Wilco – The Whole Love
The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
Radiohead – The King of Limbs

I was also surprised, and somewhat disappointed to see yet another rehash of Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, which celebrated a 40th anniversary. I’m still a fan, and the reissue seems to be getting good reviews. It might be worth it for the bonus tracks, but come on guys… how many times can this album be released? I have the 1971 original vinyl, the 25th anniversary edition, and the 2006 live edition (which wasn’t all that good). Sure, it’s a classic album. I always felt Aqualung simply put the nail in the coffin in terms of recognition for subsequent output, locking them in a timewarp for classic rock radio. Guess that is the price of fame.

I also discovered some things from prior to 2011 that are worth mentioning:

Walk Hard – The Dewey Cox Story – a 2008 comedy/parody of bio films like Walk the Line and Ray! The film features high quality music production, showing that the music wasn’t just an afterthought. The songwriting – if a little off color at times – is better than some “serious” music you might hear. Features actor John C. Reilly who performs all of the songs in a variety of genres beyond what should be humanly possible. Amazing. The next Spinal Tap.

The Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens (2010) – How did I miss this one? I only recently saw their 2006 Austin City Limits performance. The stage wasn’t big enough for everyone. It’s hard to get three or four band members together in one room in Central PA. How do these guys do it?

L’Etrange Mr Whinster by Horrific Child (2010) – (CD cover pictured above). A reissue of a 1976 underground Psych classic. It’s definitely an acquired taste. To quote Walk Hard… you probably don’t want any part of this shit. I happen to enjoy it.

• Stereo Pulsar Tremolo (purchased with virtual currency from Second Life)
• Holy Stain (Tremolo, Fuzz, Reverb, Pitch Bend)
• Voice Box (Harmony with some vocoder functions)
• Stereo Memory Man Delay
• Cathedral Stereo Reverb
• Ravish Sitar

One of the things I like most about analog pedals (as opposed to effect plugins) is the tactile experience of using the knobs and – at times – the somewhat random results that can be obtained by various routing combinations. My latest configuration using these pedals is as follows:

Monitor Send to Cathedral Stereo Reverb (returning to two channels on mixer). On my small mixer this turns out to be a pre-fader send. Effect Send to Stereo Memory Man Delay (also returning to two channels on mixer). On my small mixer this turns out to be a post-fader send. The “pre” or “post” nature of the send is critical to setting levels and, in some cases, results in unique effects in their own right that are only possible with that particular configuration. As for the signals I’ve put through these pedals? You name it. Acoustic and electric guitar, voice, Kaoss pad, percussion, keyboard…. lots of flexibility, as heard on my Signals with Shivasongster radio program.

Stereo Pulsar sounds great on a Strat or hollow-body electric guitar. It seems to work best on its own, or maybe just a touch of distortion. I usually do not have the Pulsar as part of my larger pedal board due to space issues. If I want tremolo, I’ll put the Holy Stain into action as it is practically the same tremolo effect. The Holy Stain’s fuzz and drive options (bright, dark, warm) are very good for a wide range of styles, and approach the tone I like most. These can be used in combination with the tremolo. The pitch bend option is less likely to be useful for anyone outside of experimental genres, but as such it is a lot of fun. Connect an optical sensor to the expression jack and you can have even more fun. I tend not to use the reverb (room and hall) very much because it muddies the sound, preferring to add this effect elsewhere in the chain. For a time, the Holy Stain was the only pedal I really felt like using because it was just so versatile. I only recently took the Holy Stain out of my signal chain because while preparing for EM2011 I ran into feedback control issues (even with a dedicated noise gate). Still, it is a great pedal.

Voice Box runs well using an SM58 or similar mic, and the phantom power allows use of condensers as well. Using a CAD e100 worked well for some experiments, but I prefer a dynamic like Sennheiser e835. The Voice Box is a touchy pedal in terms of input levels and it is hard to produce the same results between a headphone mix and a PA mix. The sounds it produces (chipmunk through demon voice and much in between) are easily overdone, so it’s worth some experimentation to see where this pedal fits in best. The Voice Box only has one proper vocoder mode, which again is touchy and takes some time to master. Those searching for more actual vocoding capability are probably better off with the EHX V256. These days I tend to use the vocoding options in Reason, but for the tactile experience and live manipulation, you can’t beat a pedal.

The Ravish Sitar, which simulates the sound of sitar and instruments with sympathetic strings, is the latest edition to my collection. I resisted getting one of these for several months because I didn’t want to fall into the trap of another device. I lost that battle after watching several online videos. I really wish my tabla player was in town now! The Ravish has been a lot of fun to use, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I’d also advise reading the manual on this one. And it may be necessary to add an expression pedal to fully exploit the capability of this one. The Ravish pedal will definitely be featured on my 2012 electro collection, but the challenge will be reigning it in. That’s testament to well-made products that continue to inspire even after the first day they arrive.

This is by far my favorite promotional video for any product:

Audio Harvest or Sonic Archaeology?

Going all the way back to my first musical experiences, I was always interested in synths, drums machines, etc, but never took time to really dive into that world too far because I couldn’t produce the music live without a large band. Other musicians were not really interested in the same things, and I gravitated toward the singer-songwriter – a persona that came out of the acoustic boom of the 90s. Looking back now, it seems many of us were inspired – directly ot otherwise – by MTV’s unplugged series. Playing acoustic guitar was always so much easier in terms of portability and setup, so that is one reason I became more of a guitarist and not a keyboard player.

The material I am putting together now is more along the lines of Mangalam, Pentangle, Organ Harvest, Why, Shadows On My Wall… but with even more instrumental development, texture, psychoacoustic stuff and a variety of recording techniques.. Pink Floyd, Bjork, Beck and Tom Waits are big influences in this area. But there’s other people like Ken Nordine (spoken word artist), Raymond Scott (who did music/sound for cartoons in the 50s). As I lean more about the history of experimental music, I’m realizing that I somehow fit into the movement, but just never gave it a chance or acknowledged it. When some people hear “electronic music” it’s hard to imagine me being into that because they might have a lot of preconceived notions about it. I like some techno/dub stuff, but that isn’t really where I am focusing my own stuff.

I am well aware that this release will be a departure for those that know me as a singer-songwriter for folk-rock artist.

These past few months have felt like a a mix of two metaphors… so I’m going to write about them from both perspectives.

Metaphor #1 – Audio Harvest
As I’ve pulled tracks and experiments together, it’s been like a harvest from a very long growing season (decades really). There are a few bad apples and things that didn’t exactly take seed, but the yield of very good material from my electro archive has been quite satisfying, and abundant. I am excited to share this material with the world as it still maintains its freshness.

Metaphor #2 – Sonic Archaeology
While I am also generating completely new material, part of my process of selecting tracks for an “electro” release includes going back through my notes and computer folders to find out what might work from my unreleased archive. This has been more laborious, involving various programs, plugins, platforms that were employed to create the material. Unearthing a song can sometimes require working through layers upon layers of experiments, notes spanning years and a variety of systems. Sometimes my notes (types or written) are good, sometimes not so much.

In my folk/blues material, the primary building blocks are chord progressions, lyrics, and maybe a guitar tone. In the electronic realm, an entire track could be based on a specific sound experiment within a synth, or a beat composed of looped elements or samples. There may also be chords and lyrics, but more often there is a stronger reliance on the texture of the sound. That texture may rely on a piece of software or hardware that is no longer available. In those cases, I have been forced to consider the amount of time/effort involved in reproducing the original sounds vs exploring new ways to arrange the same material.

As I dig through these old tracks, I sometimes uncover forgotten worlds where the music seems to come out of a different frame of mind, alien to what I might be doing these days. Depending on what was inspiring me at the time, there’s a wide range of techniques that might be employed. Was I in my analog pedal phase? Fascinated with loops, noise & found sounds? Or was I going back to basics with acoustic guitar and vocals? All of the above?

I had a Minidisc recorder for a while, but had a hard drive crash and was unable to recover some of the files. I had the files, but the encryption bullshit that Sony used wouldn’t allow me to convert the files on a new machine. It took me a few years (2007 to 2011), but I eventually found a tech geek to help me. We have just completed restoring the files, some of which were on the experimental side and will be part of the electro release.

Some tracks recovered from earlier eras are nearly finished, but might contain flubs that bother me. I’m perfectly aware that many people will not even notice such things, but the electro community seems pretty discerning, so I am still working out how formal this release will be.

Much of the archaeology comes from the way my recording platform has evolved. Like the path of civilization from “primitive” to what we recognize today as “modern”, my recording techniques have evolved from the humble Fostex 4-track cassette to the revolutionary (at the time) Roland VS-1680. Along the way there have been experiments on 1/4 inch analog reel to reel, DAT, MiniDisc, and the portable Zoom H4n. But these days, pretty much everything is in the software realm. I was a Cakewalk Sonar for 15+ years, but also used Sonoma Riffworks (Mac/PC), Sony Acid Pro, Propellerhead Reason (Mac/PC) GarageBand, and for a short time I tried used Cubase and Protools Lite. I’ve had to take the archaeological approach by looking at things in layers by year. There are several distinct time periods.

1989 and earlier – Fostex 4-track
1990-2000 – Fostex, Cakewalk, and Roland 1680
2001-2010 Roland 1680, PC: Acid Pro & Sonar, Reason, Riffworks
2009 – Macbook enters the picture, changes everything in terms of ergonomics
2010-present – Heavy use of analog pedals, almost exclusive use of Propellerhead Reason

Then there’s the multitude of sound generation possibilities – analog and digital – that are too numerous to mention. I’ve even built a few of my own experimental instruments. In the computer music realm, it’s easy to get attached to plugins. I’ve always been weary of reliance on plug-ins, and have limited their use. Still, their availability and low cost make them attractive for sonic experimentation in the electro genre.

Back in 2008, one of my PCs was offline due to a hard drive crash (the same one that botched my Minidisc software). So while that machine was being rebuilt, I used my laptop to sketch out some ideas with an electro program called eJay Dance 6, which came free with a music magazine. The eJay interface was completely foreign to me. It was unlike any other music program that I had used up until that time. eJay was not really geared towards what I would call “pro” use, and it was definitely designed more for live DJs. I knew that eJay wasn’t likely to be something that I’d spend much time with over the long term, but it had some interesting features that were worth keeping it around. It’s a perfect example of a tool that may not be available after XP is discontinued in 2014. Perhaps this is one reason I always come back to acoustic guitar. It’s always compatible, and aside from regular maintenance, it never needs to be upgraded.

A 2011 winds down I am taking stock of the material I’ve unearthed and the new material that I’ve created. As 2012 ramps up I will determine which tracks are keepers. I hope you will join me for the journey!