07.30.2010
I've been working on this project in Processing for a bit now. My attempts to actually embed it in a website, so that YOU can use it at home, have been stymied by the fact that the video objects I'm trying to use don't work in Java Applets. What I really should do is rewrite the whole thing in openFrameworks as an exercise -- the code's not that fancy -- so that it runs faster and I can give it to you direct.
At the moment, it only runs on my computer. I'm working on a downloadable version, but in the meantime, here's a little test video. The idea for final installation is that you'd have a screen inside of a frame, showing the room back to itself (like a mirror). But in order to be reflected in the mirror, you have to make sound. Otherwise you just leave little "ghost trails"...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
06.16.2010
I was in Denmark teaching last week. On my last day I had some time to walk around and I stopped into a café for a coffee. There was a pie-and-coffee deal, which I'm a bit of a sucker for. The motherly woman running the place asked me (first in Danish, which encouragingly happened with increasing frequency during my few days there) if I wanted sour cream or whipped cream to go with the pie. I said "whichever one is more Danish". Thankfully she took this as the half-joke I meant it and said "Whipped cream, definitely. Sour cream is I think French."
What with my Scandinavian/English ancestry, I'm a bit of a dairy-fat junkie, truth be told. Emma says that where some people have a sweet tooth, I have a fat tooth. So I was fairly delighted when the proprietor picked up a gigantic canister of homemade whipped cream (no gas-propelled flavorless '50s-misspellings whip, here) and squirted some on the pie slice. Immediately, though, it ran out. So she sent me to my table and promised she'd being me more as soon as it was ready.
After a few minutes, here's what I got. Basically it's a cereal bowl full of dense whipped cream:
(Note also the fresh-squeezed oj and really quite good filter coffee. England, take note.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
06.01.2010
A bit ago, after I arrived in Bath, I was asked to come talk to a class studying collaboration. It didn't occur to me until they asked me, but almost everything I've done artistically has been some sort of collaboration or another. So preparing for the class was helpful to me in that way, but also because it made me sort out my thoughts about collaboration and try to come up with something interesting to say on the topic.
My notes for the lecture, in slightly edited form, are below:
Looking over the collaborative work I've done in the past, and the relationships that have resulted from those working processes, I see them in every case fall into one of two types of collaboration. There's certainly some overlap between the two, but for simplicity I'll call them by the terms 'Creative' & 'Professional'.
A. Creative – collaborating more to co-develop concepts, ideas. Process-based.
B. Professional – collaborating more to seek complimentary skills. Results-based.
Ask for general examples from students. Possibilities:
A. Art installation, Band, Experimental theatre/dance, Indie films (sometimes)
B. Band, Film, Professional theatre/dance
So, B, the 'professional' collaboration, is kind of like taking your car in to a mechanic. You don't have the skills to do that yourself, so you want to hire those skills. Do you want the best person for the job? What if the best person costs one million pounds? Ok, you want the best person for the job — but within your means.
A, the 'creative' collaboration, is more like a compost pile, or making, er, beer or bread. Something that involves micro-organisms, anyway. The idea being that you put the right ingredients together and wait and let whatever happens happen.
Not that a creative collaboration doesn't take work— it takes at least as much work to do A well as to do B well. Everyone has to put in a lot more time into a creative collaboration for it to really be great, is the point. Alternately, a professional collaboration can have radical new ideas or processes in it— that's just not the main point. The main point in that case is producing. Any ingenious solutions you come up with are nice, but at the end of the day not ultimately why everyone's there.
Note that there's crossover. It's possible (theoretically/occasionally/under special circumstance) to have both kinds of collaboration at once. Or (more reasonably) it's possible for certain bands, let's say, or theatre troupes to be "A" collaborations and others to be "B" collaborations. But at any one point you can usually look at an endeavor and place it in one or the other category.
Additionally, with B you tend to have Someone In Charge. There's a "boss" to report to, even if that's downplayed in the day-to-day workings. With A you may have a leader who gets everyone together, and is the sort of "guiding light" but that leader tends to step aside whenever discussion starts and let other ideas carry as much weight as his or her own.
There are some obvious advantages to each approach: A tends to lead to radical new creativity and ideas, B gives polished, presentable results.
I bring all this up, though, and think it's important because lots of problems with collaboration happen when you think you're in one type, but the other party thinks you're in the other. As an example, for one of the first film scores I write, I was hired with a lot of talk about wanting an "experimental" score and giving me lots of freedom to "make a statement" …but when it came down to it, after all the money was spent and the score was recorded, they wanted a very traditional score. Lots of time and energy was spent revising the semi-final score to meet the producer's notes, when really I could have just written the score he wanted in the first place, if he would have approached me with "we want a very traditional score for this film, we've temped it a certain way and we think the temp works." Of course, I might not have been as interested, or I might have asked for more money in that case, because imitating a temp is much less fun than actually writing music. In summary, though: this could have been a really nice collaboration, if everyone involved knew what they wanted from the beginning, and had the communication skills to ask for it directly (I include myself, certainly, in the lack-of-communication department for that project. As the score which they'd initially found fresh and exciting started to dissatisfy them, I let my confusion take over and tried to manage competing advice from the director and producer, instead of trying to get them to all sit down and reëvaluate the first conversation we'd had about music in the film.)
The reverse can happen too: I recorded with a musician once who was amazing, completely ridiculously good player, very precise and delicate and never needed more than one take to do anything. In the studio, though, I found that this person had no patience at all for an "A" collaboration — I was somewhat organized, had charts for all the songs we were doing, but a lot of the details were left wide open. If she asked any question about her part, she wanted an immediate answer, whereas I wanted to hear what each one sounded like, maybe more than once, try it out, give it some thought, etc. Overall this was a good collaboration, but because we weren't on the same page about process, I think it was much more stressful than it needed to be for both of us.
A good collaboration example in Type B: Nearly every film score. It goes like this: there's a director and a producer (often on small films the same person) and they have spent a year on a script, finding money, finding locations, getting permits, shooting an incredibly expensive mile of film, getting it scanned and edited, and are now finally thinking about music. They are terrified that music will destroy their film. As the prospective composer, I reassure them that I want to further their vision, that I love the script, that it's all going to be great. I demo things like crazy until they agree, and we both think the music is doing what the film needs. Then we go into the studio and record as cheaply as we can get something good. I take it home and mix until they're even happier. At no point do I fight with them or act sad if I have to throw out an idea that I love and have spend 20 hours on because they think it's "somehow not quite gelling with the scene". It's their film! Any understanding I have of it is based on a couple of weeks, whereas they've been doing this for probably a year. Even if that means that they have lost all perspective and are making bad decisions, it's their baby and when your baby is a film that means that it's yours to kill. The couple of times when I have thought a director's decision about a certain musical cue is just crazy and wrong, about half the time it turns out that they were right when I watch the film a year later.
Good type A examples abound, but they're harder to talk about in a general sense. In all of them, though, someone has a concept. Ideally everyone involved hangs out, drinks beer, gets to know each other, and then develops some ideas on their own. Then we all reconvene, drink more beer, give feedback, set schedules and repeat the process. The big downside to the type A collaboration is that about half of the time it doesn't actually result in a performance. New work is generated, ideas come up, there's lots of raw material there, but as the whole thing is so open-ended, if there's not a cutoff point or a deadline or a grant with rules about spending, it's easy to just work and work and tweak and then eventually life gets in the way and you have something, but not the completed work you set out to do. My piece "A Capsule Held Static" was written for a project where musicians would write a score first, and then filmmakers would make a film to it. There was a big meeting with beer, I went away and wrote that piece, but then by the time I finished it the grand project had fallen apart. I'd still like to see a film to this music, but it's certainly had a life of its own as a sound-piece.
Each of these types has significant strengths and weaknesses. Theoretically, it should be possible to start as a Type A collaboration, get some radical new ideas, let them germinate or gestate or whatever metaphor, and then convert your team into a Type B collaboration and pump out professional-level work on a budget, meeting all your deadlines. But this hardly ever happens. It's incredibly hard to convert one into the other.
Why might this be difficult? Well, people with very different skill sets sometimes have a hard time speaking the same artistic language. So for them a Type A collaboration would be challenging— those are, most often, made up of people in the same field: experimental theatre troupes, some bands, some dance companies. Also, once a group has a dynamic and habits and has developed a certain way of working together, it's very hard to just say "okay, we're going to change all that now."
There's one other way to have your cake and eat it too, though: Pixar rather famously has creative teams that work like a Type A collaboration — they sit around generating ideas and concepts and scripts. They work on new animation techniques. And then once a project is ready to go, it gets turned over to the "B" people, who follow a Hollywood timeline and get the thing done so that everyone can make a zillion dollars. This works quite well for them, and I think it does so largely because the teams are (a) separate, but with (b) good communication between them. Also rather importantly/famously, the groups are paid the same and are given the same status within the company. So there's not a sense that certain work at the company is "real" creative work or the "real Pixar" and other stuff is just schlock. (The above link is hilarious, but here are two other good articles on Ed Catmull and the culture of creativity there.)
All of this is most important (thanks for reading this far) not because one kind of collaboration is inherently better than the other— they're not— but simply because any collaboration will go better if all parties know what to expect. We're lacking a vocabulary to talk about these differences, and I think that using these, internally or explicitly, will help you navigate future collaborations more smoothly, to see what people want when they don't know how to say what they want, and to respond in creating in a way that will give you the best experience and end product— and hopefully get you called back the next time.
Student exercise: Write down two examples of collaborations you've had. Say which type you think they were and why. Volunteers to share with the class & discuss. What could have helped this be a better collaboration?Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)Next, Write down a creative goal and say what type of collaboration you think it should be, and why.
Questions
05.24.2010
Working on a Max project, I suddenly needed screen space and dumped all of the explanatory text into a corner. (It flies back into place in "presentation mode", for those 99.5% of you who don't happen use the program)
The text is surprisingly pretty. It occurred to me that it sort of looks like an inelegant Wordle:
I didn't finish it today, and so I can't drink any Pimm's until tomorrow. Motivation is important! And Pimm's is delicious.
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05.23.2010
"Every year, people gather at Maipo church to pray for the safeguard of their lands. Surprisingly, the vineyards seem to have been protected ever since."
Snark-tastic! Subtle! And the wine was good too.
05.23.2010
Okay, okay. We got these a while ago. I'm just now getting around to posting. The stick insects have grown from this:
to this:
Shedding many times in the process, and eating a despicable amount of ivy. That plant may be the most common thing in England, but we might still cause a shortage if this keeps up.
Every week I sneak up to the Museum of Bath at Work with my wirecutters and snip a few branches. They have loads. There's a small child who shouts HELLO if he/she sees me from his/her yard (it's hard to tell with kids sometimes, okay?)
Speaking of androgyny and gender balance, did you know that stick bugs are almost all girls? And that— despite the fact that males exist occasionally in their species— they can reproduce on their own? It's like Jurassic Park meets, I don't know, clams.
We've had two shedding accidents so far. In the first one, a stick got some skin stuck on the end of her tail, causing some problems with excretion. We were afraid she was done for, but no! She's just completely stopped shedding and growing. And maybe some other things, but again: it's hard to tell. All the other bugs are about 4 times bigger than her now. Thankfully they're peaceful and herbivorous, unlike praying mantises.
The second one was more tragic. One of the sticks got caught halfway out of her skin and sort of imploded in the process. It wasn't pretty. I'm hoping it was just a fluke and that the rest of them are happy and healthy, and not barely avoiding such similar incidents each time they molt. It did make me reflect on the benefits of being a vertebrate, though. Snakes wouldn't have that problem because their structure comes from the skeleton; they just use the skin to keep things in. Insects, on the other hand, really are shedding their skeleton each time. And apparently it's a big risky deal.
Around the same time that we got those pets, we got an even more-numerous collection of home-composting red wiggler worms:
Urgent live worms DO keep cool. Soooo cool. Emma named them all Mo'nique, we hydrated the starter-compost block, and emptied the envelope onto it. Within a few seconds they were all out of sight, exploring their new home.
And for the next few days, they were finding the limits of that home. A small but steady parade of dried-out worms at breakfast seemed to siphon off the adventurous among them, and since then they've been quite content. There are some small white mites in there, now, too, but they don't seem to be causing problems or escaping into the rest of the kitchen.
After a bit, we noticed some small round things in the compost. Looking it up on the ol' Internet we found that they were worm eggs! Looking close you can see a tiny, tiny worm inside. (If I had a better camera you could look close and see that right here. Maybe someday.) Then, a week ago or so, tiny baby worms everywhere in the compost!
We must be feeding them the right vegetables.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
05.18.2010
I'm working on a series of "game" pieces, where instead of a score the musician(s) have a set of rules that they follow. Each player is trying to win the game according to the rules, by interacting with a computer algorithm.
As you may know, I'm starting with a simple game: Tic Tac Toe. (Or, for the hemisphere I'm in at the moment, Noughts and Crosses.)
My idea for a very complicated game, though, involves manipulating the course of Conway's Game of Life via sound input, trying to get to some prespecified end state. This could produce some beautiful visuals for the audience to watch as the piece/game progresses.
Anyway, I found an implementation of Conway's Life for Max/MSP. (Hooray for not having to program that myself.)
These are my favorite accidental shapes to emerge so far:
If I could make those into an animated GIF, I would. Sigh for proprietary graphics formats.
Once Tic Tac Max is up and running, I will post it here. Email me if you'd like to be a beta tester.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
05.07.2010
I know. It's silly. But I always kind of feel like some kind of technological wizard when I boot up a Windows machine INSIDE my MacBook Pro. Seeing the DOS boot and then the not-actually-physically-present graphics card reset... man. Crazy.
Yeah, I'll probably be excited when I get my first virus, too.
04.24.2010
Today we got a new bookshelf on freecycle*. Now instead of piles of books on top of one bookcase, we have neatly organized and (at Emma's passionate insistence) alphabetized-by-category collections across two shelves.
Organizing our reference section made me laugh. Here it is, the list of titles in its entirety:
- Collins Canadian Dictionary,
- Collins Carbon Counter,
- Collins gem: Dinosaurs,
- Collins French Dictionary,
- Collins German Dictionary,
- Collins Latin Dictionary Plus Grammar,
- Collins Scrabble Companion,
- Collins gem: Pirates,
- Collins wild guide: Trees,
- Collins gem: Wine,
- Roget's International Thesaurus– Third Edition,
- The Wordsworth Dictionary of Sex,
- The New Harvard Dictionary of Music,
- Tonal Harmony (Kostka & Payne),
- Lonely Planet: Europe,
- Dictionary of Music (Morehead),
- Logic Pro 9 and Logic Express 9,
- Learning Actionscript 3.0,
- A Man About A Dog,
- Rough Guide– First-Time Around The World,
- The Oxford Companion to Music,
- and the Mon Tricot Knitting Dictionary.
*technically, really Freegle, because there was some problem with Freecycle. Whatever.
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04.19.2010
It's official about the ol' MIT'ness, now. The MIT-miss. Or whatever.
On the upside, just before I found out I was thinking "Man, if I got into MIT it would really kind of screw up my life." I've got things planned through October, and tentative stuff I'm really, really hoping to do in January and throughout next year. So, you know, while a free masters' degree would have been nice and, yes, I would have taken it had they offered, and yes, I'm going to do another, stronger application this fall for 2011, I think I'll have plenty to do and to make and to grow here, and everywhere, just not there.
Also on the upside, I get to stay here and keep doing what I love all the time. Anyone need long-distance composition?
04.03.2010
Exchanging emails with several Chi-town friends (and hearing about the spring weather there! Whoa!) prompted me to make a "things I like here/things I miss" list...
Best things about being here:
- Running through the hilly English countryside and thinking about the last 1000 years in this area. As it turns out, a lot has happened
- Being rid of the mental clutter and habits that come from living in one place for a long time
- Living a life that's almost completely art-driven
- Lots and lots of music. As many great/interesting/successful bands in the Bath/Bristol area as in the whole Midwest, easily, I'd say
- Free health care — even for visitors
- Nearly all of my food comes from within 50 miles of where I live, without me really having to think about it. That's just how the British eat
- Bad meat and good fish makes it easy to eat healthy. Half of that is also how the British eat
- Two sheep in every park, instead of lawnmowers
Things I miss most, besides of course everyone I know and love in Chicago (that's too important to put on a silly list)
- American beer (you know, the good stuff, not what the world knows about)
- Cultural diversity free of connotations of class or immigration-status
- BBQ
- Mexican restaurants open late. Or, anything open late, for that matter
- Lake Michigan and its accompanying parks and trails
- Listening to records on that lovely monitoring system
- Speaking without having to think about accents
- The smell of the air. Here is nice, but I miss there
Thoughts? Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
03.29.2010
Based on an idea by Dirty Electronics guy John Richards, I built these today:
I saw his version of this when I went to University of Plymouth's Peninsula Festival of new music and electronics.
Here's another video, with the lights on, so you can see what's going on with the structures themselves:
What's happening is that there's a starter for a fluorescent lightbulb wired into a circuit with a red incandescent bulb. When you turn on the power, the starter tries to "start up" a fluorescent tube that isn't there. It cycles fairly rapidly and completely unpredictably. When it's trying to turn the switch on the circuit is connected and the lightbulb is on. When it's "warming up" the starter itself emits a glow, and the lightbulb is off.
I haven't tested it yet, but supposedly the starters emit a tiny radio shriek every time they turn on and off. So by putting a radio near them you also get a sound effect.
As soon as I can make £10 I'm ordering some ambient light detectors to put on these, so that this randomness can control other things, too.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
03.28.2010
First, I may need to cut down on freeware. I'm sometimes close to running out of pixels. But all of these are so useful!
Second, content now needs to be emotionally stable in addition to well-encrypted?
Third, I got Elon's very-helpful Sibelius error:
Fourth, this (seen on NYT's More Articles automator) just made my day. Keep headin' in that direction, Tea Partiers. I'm at a safe distance.
03.07.2010
In researching an artist residency, I came across American artist Ben Kinsley. I've seen only a little of his art, but he's certainly got a sense of humor and passes the infamous "I'd like to have a beer with that guy" test.
Saliently, he organized a series of street events for the passing Google Street View car, around his neighborhood in Pittsburgh. I found them just by searching for "Sampsonia Way" and then exploring, which is maybe the best way to find it. Block after block of normal street-view, rainy day, sunny day, and then... what's that girl with the umbrella doing there, twice? And then it all goes wild...
Anyone know of other Street View interventions? Besides that poor Finnish guy. (Oh. That's been taken down. Probably for the best.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
03.05.2010
Yesterday I gave a lecture on collaboration to Bath Spa University Composition MA students. Preparing for it made me realize how much of my work has been collaborative, and led me to some other insights about collaborative processes that I'll write up soon.
But.
At the end of my presentation, after playing some film score clips, I played "Auto Video: Sorely Missed" from my website, and discovered that the clip there had no sound. Yikes. How did that one slip by me?
It's fixed now. If you were bamboozled by a strangely flickering, silent video before: please go watch it again...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
02.20.2010
A life goal: to be good enough to fit in at this party.
Record Club: Skip Spence "Weighted Down" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.
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02.10.2010
Nikola Tesla is one of the great unsung heroes of science and American history. At least as influential as Edison (Tesla basically invented AC power and deserves large credit for radio as well) and riotously famous in his heyday, his name is today only vaguely familiar to many— often it carries slight connotations of a volunteer's hair being stood on end using static electricity or some similar "mad-scientist" trick.
This letter, via the highly-recommended Letters of Note blog, was written during the end of Tesla's life. Tesla was never a man for money and was living broke in a transient hotel room when author Louis Adamic wrote this letter to Herbert Hoover asking Hoover to help him find a benefactor.
Click through for the whole story...
01.08.2010
This article* (subscription required), from my good buddy Khurram, is a presentation and analysis of a letter from great theoretical physicist Richard Feynman to his piano tuner.
(Read about Feynman here. He's on Bill Gates' "Who I'd Have Dinner With" list— and my list too— and his books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? make for the very finest sort of excited-about-science general reading.)
In it, he outlines problems he's intuited about tuning a piano strictly to equal-temperament. As the strings get higher and therefore shorter, the string becomes relatively thicker. This causes its stiffness to play more of a role in its overtone compositions than at longer string lengths. After some calculations— simple once they're worked out, but impressive considering they're in a casually tossed-off note**— he suggests that a piano tuned by ear might sound more "accurate" than one strictly tuned by comparing frequencies.
Like any good scientist, he states the assumptions on which he's basing this hypothesis and asks his tuner for more information about (a) what strings he tunes, in what order, so as to better know the relationships between them, and (b) whether he in fact deviates from the theory to "tune by ear" in order to create a more pleasing result.
(As it turns out, there are several physical phenomena not intuited by Feynman, which means that piano tuners do "stretch" the top and bottom pitches of the piano as our ears start to need proportionally faster and faster vibrations in order to perceive the same rise in pitch.)
*Article (requires subscription/sign-in)
**Feynman did make a few "slips of the pen" in his formulae, which are cleared up in the subsequent analysis.
12.09.2009
Rocketing to the top of my Christmas list: These speakers from Specimen Audio, built by the people Andrew Bird contracted to make his larger-than-life stage setup.
The only thing that could possibly, possibly make these any better would be if they rotated with foot pedal control, like Bird's does. Or if it came in an eight-foot-model for us superfans out there.
Then again, looking at the price tag, that might be just as well.
12.01.2009
This article talks about the beautiful sloppiness that comes from talented musicians playing in a room together, listening and responding. Lots of Very Commercial Music these days is 100% on-the-grid, and sounds a lot more like a perfect musical robot than like a bunch of humans having fun.
One of the amazing things about the early Jackson 5 recordings, for contrast, is how tight they played together, while still keeping a human groove. Conversely, the first solo MJ albums to have electronically perfect timing bring a punch and sheen that has its own kind of excitement. So, people developed tools like Beat Detective to put a human beat on the grid.
Fixing bad timing? Okay, that'll save you some time. Put everything on the beat? Well, that'll let your skater band go platinum, but it might not make anyone love life more.
(Compare Rihanna's "Umbrella", which I see as a pretty great song with terribly inhuman production.)
...All that said, I try, I really try, to not be all rah-rah-Logic all the time, but. But. Flex Tool/Flex Time in Logic 9 hit me this weekend as a way to fix timings while preserving beautiful imperfection.
Here's my djembe hit. Most of the take was on, but darnit, I just hit that one a bit late. You can see it clearly late after all the other hits, where I was pretty on:
Here, Logic has detected all of my hits. I can use the Flex Tool to just drag one hit earlier, visually lining it up with the musical groove. Note that I'm not moving the whole audio file, and I'm not slicing a region out of the audio file and moving that. I'm just dragging a blob on the waveform, and it's being seamlessly moved-and-stretched (or squished) enough to fill all the gaps and sound natural in a given context:
I'm writing about this because of how impressed I was with the results: This is still a loose groove, but it sounds like a bunch of percussionists who are better than I am. But a couple of beers in, and maybe sitting around a campfire.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
12.01.2009
This french guy, Arnaud Jourdain, took hi-res photos of a graffiti'd wall for 5 years, and then made this reconstruction of the process. It's possible to separate out layers of graffiti and see how the wall changes over time. Nice.
Via Mental Floss. Video link.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
11.15.2009
At long last, a final-ish product of the Circle of 5ths Clock.
The two things I'd still like to do: I'd love to write up a grant to make a giant version. And I would like to find nicer-sounding resonators.
But, this version works, is reliable, has low latency, and does what I set out for it to do. I've left it running most of the day today, and the warped harmonic language of the various wine glasses, bells and metal gets more and more pleasing to my ear as I hear it repeatedly. Unlike version 1.0, where a single chord happened every 15 minutes, in this version the clock strikes only on the hour, but indicates the time by the number of chords in the progression. (Like a regular clock, I suppose, but with harmonic content.) So, 5:00 pm is a 5-chord progression leading to the key of the hour, in this case B Major.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
10.23.2009
I've been hanging out at the Ragdale Foundation for about a week and a half now, which has been amazing. (More on that, later, surely.)
Tomorrow, though, I'll be having my first rehearsal for a collaboration that's been in the works for almost a year now. The piece with the cars all parked in a circle in a field and the dance happening in the middle. And maybe it's at sunset so that as it gets dark, people have to turn on their headlights to see the dancers. Or maybe it's in some really industrial area and the lights are just a compliment to the sodium vapor lamps (Hideout? What about that weird city lot across the street from you? And, why don't you ever call me anymore?)
Liz Joynt Sandberg is the choreographer, with her Think/Dance Collective.
Anyway, I went through the music tonight to fix some of the parts that I thought weren't working. Then I listened to the whole thing, and while it's not done yet, per se, I'm pretty happy with it as something to listen to. So, here it is. Current version. Hot off the presses. Et cetera.
It's a big ol' 20-minute chunk of music, and I had some good co-writing in working on it with Schmüdde, whose name I can spell in HTML without really thinking that hard about it, and whose new film "Refuge" is really really almost done. (not this one.) And with Chaga, who's not on the internet. Also this includes some violin playing by film composer and lab tech extraordinaire Nate Sandberg (not this one), who's also Liz's baby daddy.
CLICK here if you're on Facebook and don't see the Flash player. Sorry about that.
10.07.2009
The Circle-of-Fifths clock, in demo mode, playing the theme from "Jurassic Park". Because the clock only has 12 pitches, each note can play only in one octave. Which isn't necessarily the octave it is in the original melody. I'm basically just demonstrating MIDI control of this instrument... Can you hear the theme?
09.27.2009
Shot on Super 8mm in Bath, UK in January 2009 and edited using a computer process (Max/MSP/Jitter) that analyzes the song in realtime and makes editing decisions based on parameters of the music.
This is more or less Version 1.0. I made some important changes over the weekend that make sections develop over time instead of staying static, and it added a lot of life to the final product.
There are about a billion other things I want to do with this, and I'd love to hear any reactions or comments anyone has to this.
The song is Sorely Missed by the really super fantastic band The Cedar. Their album I'm Always Explaining to Mom How It's Different Here is available on iTunes but of course DRM stinks and you should get it from Amazon or best: a live show!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
09.21.2009
The structure of the "Circle of 5ths" clock is complete, and all the resonators and strikers are working.
Some need to be tuned (too many F's and Ab's, no C-natural or D-natural) and I need to matrix the pitch requests since the strikers go in order from 1-12 (or 0-11 if you're a programmer or serialist) but the resonators won't fit into the structure in that order, low to high. So when the software outputs a C, the hardware needs to know if that's resonator 7 or 9 or 2 to hit.
My original conception of the striker/resonator pairs was that each striker would be freestanding next to or attached to its resonator, and that they could be arranged in multiple configurations based on the specifics of the space. This proved to be impractical for the first build of this invention, but I hope to make a follow-up, larger, more-planned-out incarnation that uses much larger metal resonators and solenoids to strike them. The current version works well in a home or living room; this larger idea would be more suitable for a museum or outdoor installation.
YouTube link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFhzOs-Pqc
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
09.16.2009
Via National DNA Day and Genome.gov, this article talks about the fascinating process by which our environment makes heritable but still mutable changes to the way our genetic material is expressed.
Basically, the DNA story we grew up with (Our genes are your genes. Half from Mom, half from Dad, end of story) isn't the whole picture. While our understanding of genetics wasn't wrong, the big thing that epigenomics adds to the picture is the shape of your DNA in space.
In order to fit into a cell, your genes have to be tightly curled up. At the small scale of DNA, the curling is done by special chemicals that form the DNA. Critically, though, genes that are loosely bound by these chemicals are expressed (or expressed more strongly) whereas tightly bound ones are turned off, suppressed, or expressed very weakly. It's through epigenomics that smoking and diet (and, I theorize, the mental states you carry and habits you set up for yourself, such as exercise or learning to ride your bike with no hands) can actually affect your predisposition to developing certain diseases.
This is a somewhat new-ish field, and it seems like it has loads of potential. Thanks to the folks at National DNA Day for keeping us informed!
Added: This excellent article also has some fascinating information about how our epigenome might be shaped by experience.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
09.12.2009
"One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry." Michael Pollan writes in the NYT Sept 9.
I'm a big fan of this guy, I find him to be very clear and focused on a sometimes very complex issue, and also impresses me with his ability to remain nondogmatic while being at the same time very passionate.
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09.10.2009
Tonight I hope to conquer the second-to-last step (ha! hopefully) of the Circle-of-Fifths Clock I'm working to build. Over the last couple of days I've mounted the strikers onto the stands and wired them up. A few of the bigger strikers don't want to work if they're at too severe of an angle. Adjustments made.
One glass resonator down, so far. This beer glass survived so many moves and dishwashers and roommates:
On the upside, my martini shaker makes a cool ringing sound. So, I have four of my required 12 pitches accounted for. Hard drive platters ring at F's of varying flatness (I have an in-tune one), my stemless wine glasses are a nice G, and I have a small, cracked splash cymbal that rings a fairly clear B.
So, you wanna do me a favor? Go around gently hitting some things and checking what they sound like. I need six more to complete the project...
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09.02.2009
Last Friday, I had a special international guest for Critical Mass. Always a great time when I can make it happen, Critical Mass is a (usually) slow, giant bike ride around the city, so named because when you get enough bikers on the road, they rule the cars instead of vice versa.
Riding, you get a lot of pedestrians asking "What are you riding for?" and probably not understanding the hastily shouted reply as you zip past. I'm hoping they manage to look it up eventually.
I'm fascinated each time, too, by the way the ride seems to bring out extremes in drivers' (and pedestrians'!) personalities. Some people are thrilled at the spectacle. Others are furious at being delayed. The ones I really can't identify with, though, are the ones I stereotype as "River North" types, who seem vaguely pissed that there's something going on that they don't understand, that doesn't fit into the standard boxes of consumerism. (It's a party! Everyone's invited, it doesn't cost anything, no one's in charge.)
There was a really nice, shy-seeming man giving out Oreos on the ride. I wish I'd talked to him more.
Oh, yeah, and the route ran into the scene of a double homicide. That part wasn't as fun. Police everywhere, confusion as we all re-routed, some somber blocks. Then, up MLK drive for a bit, and to the beach!
Then to Danny's, after, for some great chocolate stout and one of the Unibroue variants that I never remember the names of.
(*All images taken on the Android G1. The plate does a funny wobbly thing that sometimes gives the images a bit of a Van Gogh feel. Sometimes enjoyable, occasionally aggravating.)
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09.02.2009
A while back I stopped by the ESS Garage Sale, where Experimental Sound Studio (a great place) lets circuit-bender types sell their circuit-bent creations. I got a magnetic contact mic for Emma, which came inside a blue tin with a color-changing LED in it.
I'll probably end up making some more of those.
And I played with loads of circuit-bent Casios, and generally wished I had more lifetimes in which to learn about all this stuff.
Toward the back of the studio, I saw this sign posted (image) which reminded me of a lot of the projects I've been working on lately. Totally wacky!
Contest: Best idea for using an electric fish's pulse for a piece... go!
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08.13.2009
Built! Many improvements to be made this weekend, in my top-secret laboratory in an undisclosed location in SE Wisconsin.
Anybody have some large glass objects (vases, fishbowls) they want to lend/donate to this project? I'll need 12.
Well, 12 plus the number that I break...
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08.13.2009
Khurram pointed this out last week, and I had to get a picture:
(click to enlarge)
He said "Someone got this far with a crappy, broken suitcase, saw the luggage store across the street, and just gave up and threw it in the trash."
Perfect. You can see "Luggage" on the window across the street, moments away from being eclipsed by the bus.
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08.06.2009
Good news! I've just been awarded a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest. I don't know what the exact dates are, but I'll have two weeks sometime in the semi-near future to write nonstop!
Hopefully they have a system in place for confiscating my wireless-Internet card.
Maybe I can instruct someone to keep it for me, and to only let me have it after lunch, for an hour?
Then again, with all the tech-stuff I'll be working on, I'll probably have to do research. I may have to develop self-control after all.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
08.05.2009
My former student and film-scoring buddy Daniel Vendt sent me a link to this video, with the comment "I think 'Is It Snowing' by Mira Mira would be a slightly better choice of music for this scene..."
I do really like this Barcelona song. But I'd like to try it with Snowing also. Hmm. Vimeo doesn't have a "new soundtrack" feature like YouTube does.
Great HD quality, though. The video is shot at the 2nd-largest aquarium in the world. Which immediately makes me wonder where the first one is. (Okay, it looks like it's between Georgia (the US state, not the sovereign state) and Dubai.)
07.18.2009
Here I'm trying to test out the solenoid assembly I built today. (The folks at Home Depot were so confused.)
It's made to ring a resonator (a wine glass, for example) while being controlled by MIDI.
The ad hoc "stand" I threw together to put the striker at the right height to hit the sweet spot of the wine glass... never worked for the camera. At the end of the video I give up and just hold it in position.
Summary
Stand test: fail.
Solenoid test: success!
Working up to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hiz-Kx0kM
(P.S. On facebook? You've gotta click through if you want to see the video...)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1307)
07.16.2009
Things I'm terrible at include, but are not limited to: freehand drawing.
Therefore, who wants to help me make drawings of some of these gadgets I'm trying to build? They could vary anywhere from the highly-conceptual to the blueprint-specific.
Like I said, it's not something I can do for myself. Links to your site, or whatever, will of course be included. Unless you just toss it off like nothin', without a care in the wide world.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
07.16.2009
Sunday I went to zany-cool American Science & Surplus and picked up some vintage solenoids. Check out the "Date MFD" and "PKD", in the pic:
Twelve of them, and they all smell like Band-Aids when you open them. I think it's the rubbery substance they use to seal the screws in place, or maybe it's just the sterile military packaging. But I like to think that it's just 1959 air, and that everything smelled like that between about 1949 and 1959, unless it smelled like cigarette smoke or malted milkshakes or processed foods or, you know, terrible racial tension.
Anyway, I was inspired by the Fire Extinguisher Striking Clock to use relays instead of solenoids in building this project. Sage Jonathan told me this was workable: Relays are generally cheaper, although they might not last as long.
So, it's sort of ironic that in this case, "Solenoid & Snap Switch Assy" means "We used a solenoid to drive a relay, probably because we were doing this for the military and cost was no object, and we needed it to be really rugged and last forever."
$1.75 each. Woot.
(As a side note, if you're reading these via Facebook, you may have to click through to my actual blog to get some of the content. Facebook likes to block movies and sometimes images. If you're reading from the blog, pretend I'm not saying anything right now.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (3)
07.09.2009
I just read this article in which Derek Sivers talks about a study* that shows that talking about your goals makes you less likely to achieve them. Oops.
Basically the deal is that if you announce your intent to do something, part of your brain considers it done— socially done, anyway— and so you work less hard to actually complete it.
Based on my personal experience, I'd say that's true. And knowing this will likely affect my behavior in ways most of you will probably be happy with.
Side story: I heard once that a study showed that people tip in restaurants not according to how much they like their server, but according to how much they think their server likes them. Again, once I heard about this I saw it happening all the time in real life... And you can see the really good servers working this angle: slightly distant at the beginning of the meal, and then allowing themselves to be "won over" throughout, maybe even throwing in a little something for free toward the end of the meal. Manipulation!*(done a long time ago, but I've never heard of it— maybe the authors shouldn't have talked about publishing so much?)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1431)
07.08.2009
Ever so slightly different from a Mira Mira show, this piece uses a microphone to pick up the spoken text as well as the playing inside the piano. That sound is processed using a technique called granular synthesis in which very small chunks of sound are sampled and then "purified" into their component pitches before being played back through a speaker hidden in the piano.
This piece grew out of the desire to write a piece where a speaker would drive the strings of the piano through sympathetic resonance, and the speaker in turn would be playing back material based on what was reverberating in the piano at the time. I'd still like to make that piece, but I'll have to come up with a better anti-feedback mechanism first. (Strictly speaking, the whole piece is feedback. But I want to keep the growing-living-thing kind and squelch the squealing kind. Sadly, all the algorithms I've found mention of that might do this are proprietary/patented/secret.)
Amanda DeBoer reads the text, though you don't see her much due to the camera angle. The text is a poem by Emma Hooper entitled "What She Sees".
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1)
06.10.2009
Yesterday I got these from Hanig's in Lincoln Park. The service there was indifferent, but the shoes have been fantastic so far.
I wore them to Hopleaf this evening and was promptly a mini-celebrity to everyone but the waitress, who claimed she had a pair "like, 10 years ago" and was so over them. One lady kept bringing more people over to see, and asked to feel my feet.
(For the record: the shoes were first introduced in 2007.)
Anyway, aside from the health benefits of letting your feet do what millions of years of evolution... or, um, design... have shaped them for, I also read about all the fascinating ways we're evolved to run long distances barefoot. (1960 marathon world record? Set by a barefoot guy.)
Check out this "persistence hunt" of Kudu from a David Attenborough documentary:
Other articles here. Very interesting. Highly recommended.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (5535)
06.04.2009
Several weeks ago an acquaintance emailed me an mp3. It took me a while to listen to it, because, as you all know, when someone forwards you an mp3 it's usually not worth dropping everything to check it out.
This was a big exception. The track was "Beth Dorris" — which I mistakenly took for the artist until I added it to iTunes.
The artist is Arturo En El Barco, the album is called Music for students and their friends.
Which I think is a fantastic title, especially once you hear the music. It's spacious, not-too-glitchy electronic-ish textural music, but it seems to have all been made not from synthesizers, but from a house's worth of spare interesting-sounding instruments, layered over and mixed in with samples of people, children, talking. Great string arrangements, too.
Here's a track:
mp3 download linkThanks, Jay Zawadzki!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (533)
05.31.2009
Wow, adaptation in robots!
This article is also interesting: Adam, the first robotic scientist.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (4)
05.31.2009
I really want to get one of these / make one of these:
Read the article here.
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05.26.2009
I figured out the basics of CSS today, and put it into ickydog.com, my personal site. I'm pretty proud of the code, now. A month ago it was a mess, tables everywhere, frames, etc. Now... well, it might not be a Zen Garden yet, but it's a lot more manageable.
I've been using Text Wrangler to do code editing lately. Highly recommended, and free.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (659)
05.15.2009
Whoa. I want this:
Or, I want to make that. Or at least meet that artist.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (2277)
05.15.2009
A TED talk on a very, very cool technology in its infancy. The technology being demoed is impressive.
What they're showing is a sort of proof-of-concept of the kind of fluid interfaces we see in sci-fi. For example, you make a call by holding your hand in a certain way, which brings up a projected number pad. Touch to dial the number, and suddenly you're on the phone.
The other best thing shown is being able to just form a frame with your fingers, "director-style", and having the picture you're framing actually be taken.
Also, I redid ickydog.com today. Comments?
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1863)
05.12.2009
And he talks about the musical he's writing of Coraline here.D: Have you spoken with Neil Gaiman much, asking for advice or discussing story points?SM: We had an extended difficulty with the color coding of the marbles that represent the souls of the dead children.
And then, later:
D: Both the Lemony Snicket project and this share a similar Brothers Grimm sort of approach to children’s stories. What’s fun about being wicked to kids?SM: I like terrible things happening to children. Who doesn’t?
D: Cautious parents?
SM: Well, if you really want your child to have an active imagination, there’s nothing quite like H.P. Lovecraft to get your child’s nightmares going.
D: So it’s nightmare fuel? Healthy nightmare fuel?
SM: Healthy, very healthy.
link via Neil on, yes, Twitter.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (2)
05.11.2009
I've been reading about agency, and/or perceived agency, in robots lately, as part of a secret project. Here's a video:
video here. (Oops, it was autoplaying before.)
from Anita Lillie's awesome, and interesting, page at http://www.flyingpudding.com. (The best part might be "The Best Thing I've Learned Today", which has definitely been added to my RSS.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
05.07.2009
Two articles I saw in the NYT today. I might have to address them separately. The first is an Op-Ed by Charles M. Blow. It's ostensibly a review of the Pew Forum study whose opening sentence is:
Americans change religious affiliation early and often.And which continues on with the finding that "roughly half of the U.S. adult population has changed religion at some point in their life."
His article, though, focuses on the fact that children raised unaffiliated with a specific religion often will convert to a religion at some point in their lives. With no sample size given in the linked graphic, we don't know much about this statement. Specifically, the thing I'm wondering is: What's the breakdown between kids raised with an awareness of religious history, world religions, and religious-sociological thought, versus those who are raised in the prevailing religious milieu of the US without knowing any actual facts about human religious experience?
This latter approach, in practice, more or less amounts to being raised in a folk religion. For most of human history, children didn't have to be taught most of the local religion. There was simply one option, and they soaked up the rhythms of village life, language, religion, and superstition all in one go. This isn't a recipe for critical thought, and it's not surprising that children raised in this environment would choose to learn more about one of these religions at first hand.
The other tack taken by the article reminds me of Stephen Colbert complaining that "Reality has a well-known liberal bias". He's basically saying: Not believing is too difficult, so I'm going to profess faith— regardless of its truth— because I find that more socially and emotionally convenient than drawing my own conclusions:
While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?The next bit, while it appears to be meant critically, is actually also a call-to-action on the part of rationalism:
As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.Stronger social fabric, without accepting traditional untruths. How do we do that? Perhaps we need to find a way to form the same sort of robust groups that religion does by default, without the dogma and "your life is not your own" philosophy. Of course, there's the "herding cats" problem— a group that tells you that you're not important, but the group is, and that the higher calling you're being taught about is divine and infallible... well, that's going to tend to unify people more than a group that encourages everyone to think for themselves. We might call it the "heresy" problem.
A second, related problem, is that there's no "seed crystal" for these groups to grow around. You've got groups that are "against" something, but we've really got no word for the love of critical thinking and self-examination, for reading and science and learning about the world. These qualities tend to be found individually and cherished, but not talked about.
Maybe a group for everyone who reads on the train, instead of sleeping or playing those tilty games?
What could this "seed crystal" be called? I don't think it's a matter of the thing existing, it's a problem of there being a word for that thing, so that we can start a discussion about it.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (3)
05.06.2009
A synchronicity of today:
I read this prophetic quote from Glenn Gould in 1964 (!) in a paper on new instruments today (right before I started reading a paper on agency in robots— don't ask)
Electronic transmission has already inspired a new concept of multiple-authorship responsibility in which the specific concepts of the composer, the performer, and, indeed, the consumer overlap. ...It will not, it seems to me, be very much longer before a more self-assertive streak is detected in the listener's participation, before, to give but one example, “do-it-yourself” tape editing is the prerogative of every reasonably conscientious consumer of recorded music (the Hausmusik activity of the future, perhaps!). And I would be most surprised if the consumer involvement were to terminate at that level. In fact, implicit in electronic culture is an acceptance of the idea of multilevel participation in the creative process.—From Strauss and the Electronic Future, 1964
Edited here.
Is there a way to double-bold that last bit? Wow!
Then I watched this video one of my students sent out (link warning— music plays right away); it's a remix made from things gathered from across YouTube and repurposed for a we'll-call-it-new composition:
Yup. New media, new rules. New aesthetic.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
05.03.2009
It's kind of hard to control, because there's no antenna. Yet. But! It works, and sounds kind of cool R2D2 sci-fi this way...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
05.02.2009
Today I:
- Slept until 11
- Built a theremin
- Wrote a ton of music for this Swiss festival
- Ate Paneforte from Panozzo's
- Found a secret note left in my cupboard
- Ran 13.1 miles (ouch!)
- Made Mexican hot chocolate (yum)
It's good to be done promoting this album. Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
04.30.2009
Via Chris Beckstrom (below is an extract, it's the bit I find most interesting. Read the whole thing here, I think.)
We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.
Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!
...
Futurist musicians must continually enlarge and enrich the field of sounds. This corresponds to a need in our sensibility. We note, in fact, in the composers of genius, a tendency towards the most complicated dissonances. As these move further and further away from pure sound, they almost achieve noise-sound. This need and this tendency cannot be satisfied except by the adding and the substitution of noises for sounds.
Futurist musicians must substitute for the limited variety of tones posessed by orchestral instruments today the infinite variety of tones of noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
The musician’s sensibility, liberated from facile and traditional Rhythm, must find in noises the means of extension and renewal, given that every noise offers the union of the most diverse rhythms apart from the predominant one.
Since every noise contains a predominant general tone in its irregular vibrations it will be easy to obtain in the construction of instruments which imitate them a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quarter-tones. This variety of tones will not remove the characteristic tone from each noise, but will amplify only its texture or extension.
The practical difficulties in constructing these instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principle which produces the noise has been found, its tone can be changed by following the same general laws of acoustics. If the instrument is to have a rotating movement, for instance, we will increase or decrease the speed, whereas if it is to not have rotating movement the noise-producing parts will vary in size and tautness.
The new orchestra will achieve the most complex and novel aural emotions not by incorporating a succession of life-imitating noises but by manipulating fantastic juxtapositions of these varied tones and rhythms. Therefore an instrument will have to offer the possibility of tone changes and varying degrees of amplification.
The variety of noises is infinite. If today, when we have perhaps a thousand different machines, we can distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, as new machines multiply, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not merely in a simply imitative way, but to combine them according to our imagination.
We therefore invite young musicians of talent to conduct a sustained observation of all noises, in order to understand the various rhythms of which they are composed, their principal and secondary tones. By comparing the various tones of noises with those of sounds, they will be convinced of the extent to which the former exceed the latter. This will afford not only an understanding, but also a taste and passion for noises. After being conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.
04.26.2009
From Very Short List: "Technically, Adam Berg’s short film Carousel is an ad for Philips’s flat-screen Cinema 21:9 (“the world’s first cinema-proportion TV”). But in terms of technical achievement, it’s a flat-out masterpiece.
The spot consists of a 2-minute-19-second tracking shot: an intense firefight between cops and bad guys. The characters never move, but the camera does, floating down corridors, up staircases, and out of windows, moving through a single, frozen, intricately staged moment. It’s a symphony of controlled chaos, a seamless fusion of live action and CGI. Then the clip loops full-circle, and we’re right back where it all began. As with the best thrill rides, you’ll want to queue up for another spin."
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1)
04.24.2009
Hey, my interview with Radio Free Chicago just got posted. Check it out here.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1)
04.24.2009
Music for Scientists' official launch event is tomorrow. I'm excited.
I've decided to print programs, like a recital. Because it's so chamber-music-y, especially in this setting. And something about this particular group of musicians... the attention to the act of playing-together is just really high and that's been very rewarding.
Tomorrow. Ice cream. 8pm. Elastic Arts.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (135)
04.21.2009
Music For Scientists' first review just showed up on the web here. Go Chicagoist!
Late tonight, after the Yann Tiersen concert, I'll update this site and musicforscientists.com to have more info about the show itself.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
04.16.2009
The Mira Mira page on facebook now has an "event" related to the launch of Music for Scientists. RSVP there, if you like.
Rehearsing nonstop and it's SO fun to be playing this music again.
Looking forward to playing it in front of some of you, on a real grand piano...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
04.13.2009
A kindly listener just noted that I don't really have any links from this site to musicforscientists.com. How did I overlook that? The site links back here, and I've been sending people there, but...
Peer review. It's what makes science great.
Go have a listen!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (2137)
03.18.2009
The date has been set. April 25, Mira Mira will perform at Elastic Arts in Logan Square at 8pm. BYOB and donation-based-entry. Who could ask for anything more?
Oh yeah, you could ask for the coolest opening act in the history of music-and-science-colliding: Celebrity physicists Sidney Nagel and Heinrich M. Jager have agreed to do physics demonstrations during the first part of the evening's program.
I, for one, am very excited.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (60)
03.18.2009
Just realized that the blog was the only part of the site that had been updated in, oh, a long time. I've been busy with that whole "Music for Scientists" thing. Anyway, the rest of the site has been duly updated and is ready for action!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (59)
03.04.2009
"You" and the number Two. (The crossover point is "Tu" in Latin, French, Spanish, etc.)
If it helps, imagine being a caveman. Point at yourself, and say whatever (Ug, Thor, doesn't matter). You think: "I'm going to look out for number one. And then... and then this other one..."
Then point at your companion. What do you say?
02.21.2009
Using all twelve tones in a composition or melody seems to be blatantly excessive, compulsive in one's complete consumption of the available resources, rather like driving a Hummer is seen today. It's wasteful and expensive, both in terms of using more than is needed to get the job done, and in terms of alienating or scaring off most other folks. Continuing the car analogy, it uses an outmoded 1970's-era concept conflating that which we can do and that which we should do.
I posit that a return to compositions of voluntarily limited pitch class, while not undertaken in conscious emulation of today's "greener", more efficiency-focused world, is in harmony with the zeitgeist so as to be in unconsciously inspired by it.
(Similarly, our integration of eastern thought, vs self-conscious emulation of it in the 1970s, as shown in our use of repetition today, in rock and notated music, vs reich etc's self-conscious emulation of gamelan. More on that later.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (5607)
01.30.2009
In the spirit of "Music for Scientists" I'm going to continue posting creatively scientific, or scientifically creative, or nerd-tastic or just plain cool things from time to time, leading up to our album release.
Oh yeah-- I'm almost ready to announce the official release date, I just need to confirm the location of our party. But if you looked at a comprehensive list of national holidays between, say, now and June, you could probably figure it out.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
01.13.2009
Traveling is fantastic. I've been running, and eating a ton. And I shot some super 8 film in the park today because it was sunny.
Everything except beer costs twice as much, but from what I hear you get paid twice as much so it's really just like half price beer.
And I'm off to Prague on Saturday.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
12.24.2008
For a while I've thought "I'm not that good of a writer. I should post mp3s instead of writing on this blog."
Here's something appropriate for today. It's the sanctuary I need this time of year, anyway. Some of this was co-written with Dave Schmüdde.
Refuge (for Dave)
mp3 download link
12.16.2008
I didn't know people could do this:
Wow! And, weird!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
12.09.2008
Today's etymology ponderable: OXYGEN. (It's like Shiva, creator-destroyer, but in reverse... you know, OXY like sharp or acid and GEN like genesis or genre)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
11.16.2008
Update: buttons fixed thanks to Dave. Now I can't get the songs to play continuously, where the end of one song triggers the beginning of the next.
Maybe this sounds really stupid and obvious, but unlike a normal person who just uses a pre-made player where these details have been taken care of, I've decided it will be a better listening experience if I build something completely from scratch.
So... here I am, trying to make the tracks of the CD play in order, without stopping. My genius idea so far just makes one track play over and over forever. And of course my reaction to that wasn't to just move on it was "ooh, I could add that as another feature!"
Drat.
On the upside, I'm really happy with how the album sounds. I have to hear it a lot while I'm building this and much of it still makes me really happy.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
11.15.2008
Man, do I suck at flash. I've been trying to make this online interactive booklet for the now-official digital-only release of Music For Scientists.
But I have buttons that aren't working and that's keeping me from doing all the other wild-and-crazy stuff I want in there. Really it should be like paging through the CD booklet while listening to the CD, but brighter and flashier.
I looked into getting someone else to work on it, but it turns out people who know flash are super expensive...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
11.03.2008
I saw so many Sarah Palin costumes this weekend. What great timing. There was one who (a) was Palin from the beauty-pageant days, carring around a recorder in lieu of a flute, and (b) stayed in character the whole evening, responding to everyone's questions in down-home field-dress-a-moose youbetcha-ese.
I'll be at Obamapalooza tomorrow. (Google maps photo actually taken during Lollapalooza, which I find amusing.) And then it'll be over.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (59)
10.28.2008
Sunday I had brunch with some friends, and I told them about this crazy radical right-wing forward I'd been sent about California's Proposition 8. (Mistakenly, I can only suppose, or at least inadvertently.)
It began "The institution of marriage has gone into cardiac arrest in California" and went on to throw in the sort of boilerplate phrases like "billionaire liberal's mansion" and "gay recuiters" that I'd always imagined populated the kind of email forwards I don't get. And look! It's true!
After I told the story, Khurram's immediate response was:
That's like saying "Gay people are drinking beer, so now I can't enjoy my own beer."
I think this sums it up perfectly. You got somethin' wrong with your own beer, buddy? Maybe look into that before you go telling other people to stop drinking.
The end of the story: right after I read the email forward there was only one thing I could do: Donate to the HRC.
Khurram runs a real nice blog over at mindsandmarkets.com
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (2)
10.23.2008
"Whatever happens, the McCain campaign could never pull this off. Patience, steel... triumph."
from The Daily Dish.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (66)
10.17.2008
Yesterday I went to a funeral. My high school friend Tony had a son, six weeks old, who died over the weekend. Totally unexpected: sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. It's one of those things that used to be inexplicable and so remained nameless; now it is inexplicable and has an acronym. Such, sometimes, goes progress.
The service, of course, was the saddest thing I could imagine. There's something about the still-limitess possibilities of an infant that brings hope and joy, and there's something correspondingly hopeless about the death of an infant. I can understand why the medievals had special rules for unbaptized children who died: "straight to heaven, you haven't had time to sin."
What I was still thinking about this morning was what Tony talked about. Jonathan, when he called to tell me the terrible news, also mentioned that he was trying to think of a way to prepare Tony and Jody for the inevitable clodheaded someone who says something along the lines of "well, you can always have another one!" Technically true, yes. But half a moment's reflection should make it obvious to anyone who isn't totally wrapped up in their own talking that it's the worst thing, or maybe the second worst thing to say to bereaved parents.
Tony was amazingly strong. He was obviously deep in grief but stood at the front of the chapel as people came in and greeted them. He spoke, which is well beyond what anyone would expect: the service is for them to be supported by their loved ones in a time when they need it the most.
Tony started by saying, basically, this: "Some people say that everything happens for a reason. But if that's true, I want no part of that reason." This is the most emotion I've heard in anyone's voice who wasn't screaming. And I thought about it. This is something you hear a lot. When something goes wrong, someone will squeeze your shoulder and say it with a medium-fake smile. When a free-spirit quasi-hippie doesn't get the job they wanted, they'll use this as a convenient excuse. When someone takes a risk that goes hugely wrong, they'll use that as a consolation.
To actually believe or say this, though, seems like a sick joke. You really only need to think through what will logically follow from that statement:
"Everything happens for a reason: Let's not research SIDS or try to learn how to prevent it."
"Everything happens for a reason: God must be testing you."
"Everything happens for a reason: God must have wanted Evan back home." (This is the worst and most nonsensical one, but it gets said a lot)
"Everything happens for a reason: Basically, we're powerless and shouldn't try to understand anything."
What a way to live.
Yes, from a physical standpoint everything happens for a reason, in that every motion has a natural cause. The reason, though, is not because someone said "make it so" in the heavens. Here, the reason is: We are animals, we are mammals. There is a certain rate of infant mortality among all animals. This makes Tony and Jody's loss no less tragic, but it is a real reason and not a rationalization or a running away.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
10.10.2008
Paris Motel is a band from England that (full disclosure) I had the good fortune to play keyboard for a few years ago at SXSW. I recently rediscovered their latest album, entitled In the Salpetriere or, more correctly, if your browser supports it: In the Salpêtrière.
Two mp3s I think you'll enjoy. I'm posting both a player and download links; this is for promotional purposes and if anyone wants the links to go away I can make that happen.
Track 4: After Wanda.
Track 6: City of Ladies.
09.22.2008
The story of 81-year-old Charlie Williams having to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals so he can put his own horse on his own property is a perfect illustration of the new face of Stafford County government: overly regulatory, intrusive, and restrictive.
I wonder what the deal is with the horse. I wonder who Charlie Williams is voting for...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
09.13.2008
Yesterday, I finished the final mix of the first track of the new album. It's exciting. It sounds especially great in the car. Which is strange, because most of Mira Mira is more sitting music than driving music, or so I'd always thought. I don't really see us putting a track on the "+NRG Workout" compilation anyway.
Apologies for the delays we've run into. And thanks to everyone who's been asking me lately "is that album still going to come out? When can I hear it?" That makes me happy.
Soon. Tentative mastering next week.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
08.19.2008
The end of the world? The planet being sucked into a black hole centered on Switzerland?
But, there are some BIG beautiful pictures here of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN— the largest and most powerful particle accelerator built to date— which finally has a date to start operation: September 10, 2008.
  |
[Courtesy The Big Picture]
[Article on the Hawaii lawsuit here]
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (66)
08.19.2008
If this is half as entertaining for you as it is for me... well, then, this is probably a blog. But check out the three adjacent google-alerts that came in today. Today!
- Charlie Williams: Baby items
- Charlie Williams: Avril Lavigne's backup dancer
- Charlie Williams: The record-holder for most t-shirts worn (click through, there's a YouTube movie of it)
08.12.2008
Here it is...
08.10.2008
Four days in Cupertino. I didn't meet Steve Jobs. He didn't get to touch and/or bless my iPod. I did, however, pick an apple from what I've only ever heard described as their "tree-lined" campus. It is quite a beautiful space. They sell "I visited the mothership" t-shirts (but not "Steve pet my Leopard" ones).
And, of course, I am now one geek-tastic certification richer.
If Apple's employees aren't well-treated, there's some kind of massive cover-up going on. The food there is incredible, and everyone seems to be super-smart (one chef talked to me about how she used to work in IT before she went into cooking). The cutlery and cups are all made out of corn and are biodegradable, and you separate your trash into recycle, compost, and landfill categories when you take your tray up at the end of the meal.
The apple will be served to my students before they take the Logic Pro End User Exam® at the end of the week.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (2)
07.30.2008
The Maryville, TN Daily Times (proud owners of the top-level-sounding thedailytimes.com domain!) reports:
An underground 450-gallon moonshine still that a wily mountain man operated undetected for over 20 years at the dead end of Carr's Creek Road in Townsend is now on exhibit at Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend.The entire still, including a home-made elevator, was donated to the center by the family of the late Charlie Williams, author of "Memoirs of a Mountain Man."
Apparently this particular still went into operation in the 1960s and made moonshine a-plenty through the '80s, but "moonshining" is described as "the old family standard", to be fallen back on whenever bad times lurk ahead.
Given how fascinated I am with (a) the making of things, and (b) alcoholic beverages, it's tempting to quote the in-depth discussion of moonshining methodology. But you'd better just click over to the article. One more pull-quote, about Charlie's schooling:
After he graduated from Townsend High School, Chuck studied engineering at the University of Tennessee, schooling financed by shine.Posted by charlie williams | Comments (121)
07.29.2008
I've mentioned him before, but this is the first real post about it. Charlie Williams, "the Korean Dragon", appears playing in a pro tournament here.
Jose Parica, the leader of the Asian invasion, faces off with the Korean Dragon, Charlie Williams.Both players are extremely talented and vialble contenders for the the U.S. Open crown.
Who will advance?
What was the turning point of the match?
07.28.2008
Have you been reading Andrew Bird's blog on the NYT website? All the contributors are interesting, but of course our hometown kid Bird is the best.
He's "concerned" with how much he likes his upcoming album, the follow-up to the guitar-heavy and astounding "Armchair Apocrypha". He recorded part of the album in Nashville and part in the Wilco loft. He's still playing with Dosh. What a great musical existence.
He's also a much, much better blogger than I am. He says smart things about music and the process of creating it. Give it a look.
07.25.2008
The film scoring program I work for has its first group of graduating students. They're all heading out to LA this week to finish up their studies, do some really cool internships*, and record their thesis scores. Excitingly, almost all of them plan to remain in LA and look for work in the industry.
Yesterday I got this email from one of my students.
Hey everyone,We're taking a road trip out west and we're making a video blog about it! Check it out at
http://documenterrorists.blogspot.com/
Feel free to forward this link to anyone who might enjoy it. Take care!
Chris
Typically hilarious. Recommended.
I'll be flying out in a little over a week. Posts will continue (likely on a more-frequent basis) from there, since I'll just be doing my job instead of scrambling around trying to (1) get myself ready for LA, (2) get my students ready for LA, (3) get the lab ready for the start of class in the fall (my return to Chicago and the first day of class abut almost exactly) and (4) finish an album.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (1)
07.08.2008
Not once, but twice.
Kay and I saw WALL-E on Saturday night. Then on Sunday after having our tastebuds dazzled by Maxwell Street Market tacos (fresh from the border) and our eyeballs seared by the inanity of the last day of the Taste... we biked home and decided to see it again.
It's that good.
Frank Rich wrote a column about it Sunday in the NYT. He manages to talk about all the "adult" aspects of the film — at one point a video of a previous president urges the listeners to "stay the course" — without making it seem, in his words, "juvenile or didactic".
Thomas Newman's score is beautiful and compelling, and rises to the challenge set out for him: An ongoing premise of the film is WALL-E's interest in/devotion to/obsession with "Hello, Dolly!" It's his main source of information about the humans mysteriously absent at the movie's opening.
So Tom's got to weave songs from the musical into the score for the film. Right from the beginning, in fact!
Here's an example of what it means to be a pro: He does it completely, artistically, and creatively. I imagined myself in a production meeting, hearing this idea from a director, and decided I'd probably think it was the dumbest, least-musical idea ever. Newman makes jokes with the music, makes us leave humming it, puts the tune over different chords to give it a new feel for a different scene...
Genius. That guy's great.
The second time there was a problem with the projector, which mostly impacted the sound. I don't think anyone else in the theater the second time would have been impressed by the score. On the upside, I have two more free passes the next time I come back. Tempting as it is to see WALL-E a third time, I'll likely opt for something new. Anything but Space Chimps (gag).
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
07.02.2008
According to TOC, Joanna Newsom will play with the CSO on August 22. IMO, there are few other artists who can really benefit from the support and detail an orchestra provides. When I heard this before I was struck by the lack of "cookie-cutter" arrangements: every time something repeats, the orchestra treats it differently. Given Newsom's 10-minute-average song length, this becomes even more important.
(Not included among artists who properly use an orchestra are Eric Clapton and Smoky Robinson, who basically use 40 strings to do the movin' they don't feel like doin' anymore onstage. Also to lend an air of "class".)
Highly recommended! Too bad I'll miss it.
Pick Terrace Left for this one, if you don't have a box.
(If you do have a box, please invite the rest of the band)
Lower Balcony is good too, but only in the first five or so rows.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
06.30.2008
Tonight we're going back to Wall To Wall Recording — the home of the first CD, Midnight for You — to lay down a couple of new songs. If it goes well, we'll post rough and final mixes here.
Songs to be recorded, current titles/working titles:
- The Meadow/11ses/Elevenses
- Dennett's Last Stand/Mediaventures
- [our not-so-secret, secret '80s cover]
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
06.24.2008
Okay, despite the caption, I imagine that this would be fun...
And it reminds me of this xkcd
06.20.2008
Check out my "Wordle" entry for the grant proposal that my lab is writing. They use a logarithm that finds the most frequently used words in your writing, and makes word art from them. Nerdilicious!
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Comments (64)
06.17.2008
Click here for the mixes in a Flash player.
I couldn't make it stop auto-playing, and I hate it when pages do that.
Know how to make the XSPF player stop autoplaying? (It's not responding to "autoplay=false" or "autostart=no" or anything like that.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (95)
06.15.2008
Right now I'm sitting on the comfy couch in studio 4 at CRC.
For the past week and a half I've been part of a program called Open World, which is a sort of US gov't-sponsored cultural exchange.
We've been taking them to an impressive list of Chicago restaurants including Rhapsody (at Symphony Center— great scallops!), The Billy Goat Tavern, Chicago Firehouse, Bongo Room, Opera, and Oysy Sushi.
I'm not used to eating so much.
Today's the final recording session. A full orchestra is gradually making its way into the studio, setting up under a forest canopy of $2000 mics, and beginning to warm up.
I got here around 9 am to see our engineer helping to carry timpani up the stairs to Studio 4. My job was to bring in a firewire drive with "Alsihad" sessions pre-set-up with click and video, and make sure they all work right.
Turns out the video was in the wrong format, but that was easy to fix. Re-export, re-import, done.
I checked the clicks with Cliff Colnot, our conductor (and conductor of the Chicago Civic Orchestra) to make sure there are no surprises once all the musicians are sitting there ready to go (and being paid.)
Right now everything looks good, and I've eaten a cinnamon roll. I'll post back when we're done— with a mix if I can get one.
06.11.2008
Ok.
I lied.
(I keep doing this. I'm such a blog liar. But these are all so funny. It seems like all the Charlie Williams in the country are spread out geographically and occupationally so much that I can't resist posting about this inadvertent cross-section of the population...)
![I recommend Charlie Williams of RPM Motors for all your mail order tuning needs. Charlie has tuned 3 of my massive Whiplash cams via mail order for some of my DIY customers, and the cars runs [sic] beautifully.](images/blog/cw-corvette.png)
On "Corvette Forum" out of South Florida: "I recommend Charlie Williams of RPM Motors for all your mail order tuning needs. Charlie has tuned 3 of my massive Whiplash cams via mail order for some of my DIY customers, and the cars run beautifully."
06.03.2008
Updated: Funny-link edition... check out those hyperlinks.
Further adventures in the vein of last week's blog post. (And then no more, I promise)
"Charlie Williams drinks a Bud in the tavern called On the Rocks. It is noon. He looks out the window at the haunted old pier whose denizens included the memory of himself as a boy."
The story from the Orlando Sentinel, is a profile of an old fisherman.
Really, the whole thing is worth reading. If you've met me, the cognitive dissonance will keep up with you all the way through the piece. But regardless, it's a well-written human-interest story that touches on overfishing and the collapse of global fish stock, which sits right around peak oil in the list of things that totally freak me out about the environment and what we're doing to it.
"He nurses his Bud and says, 'I could tell you stories.' He has stories about massive mullet schools, decent money at the fish house, and, of course, the grizzled commercial fishermen who wore rubber slickers, kept their Pall Malls dry in the rain, watched the moon, waited for the mullet to move."
Meanwhile in Chicago, another Charlie Williams nurses his, erm, foret and waits. He swirls his glass and says,
"What about putting the post-chorus in 11/8, and modulating to f#m in the outro?"
Maybe someday I'll sit on a boat, waiting for mullet fat with roe.
05.28.2008
You know Google Alerts, right? It's like having someone automatically Google a phrase (like your name, or your band) and email you the moment something new is posted. Pretty useful, huh?
I originally set this up a year or so ago in order to track reviews the band was getting. Since both "mira mira" and "charlie williams" are impossible to Google (though Mira Mira less so since we started this blog, and the UK writer sharing my name retired. The Korean pool player is going strong, though, or so it would seem from the search results)
So I had these alerts going:
- "mira mira" and "charlie williams"
- "mira mira" and "chicago"
- "charlie williams" and "chicago"
This stripped out most of the false "churn" associated with things like people tagging their baby photos "MIRAAAAAA MIRA MIRA MIRAAAAAA!!!1" on Flickr. (Why always baby photos?)
But then I got curious.
So I set up individual alerts just for
- my name, and for
- "mira mira".
(link to actual story, although it's not nearly as entertaining as the clipped version.)
P.S. We're still not on wikipedia...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
05.27.2008
if you were checking the site last weekend instead of enjoying the beautiful, amazing weather... or maybe if you were enjoying the beautiful amazing weather and happened to try viewing the site on your iPhone from the lakefront... you may have noticed it went down.
We're up again, on a new server. The random images should load faster than ever! That is, the ones we're not stealing from other sites. Those will load at the same speed.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (66)
05.23.2008
"Imagine that you are looking at an abstract sculpture and that you learn, after enjoying it for a while, that its shape can be defined by a very simple mathematical formula. Moreover, you find out that the sculptor is actually a technician who was commissioned by a mathematician to give solid realization to the formula. This account of the production of the object in front of you does not seem to leave much room for the creative process, so can the result be art? Should your enjoyment be less than if a similar shape had been produced without the involvement of mathematics? Or are the rigid confines of the mathematical formula entirely compatible with a genuinely aesthetic response?"
- W. Timothy Gowers "Bridging the Cultural Divide"
05.22.2008
I've been enthusiastic about the offerings at local spirits/wine/beer shop Lush (they don't have much of a site, here's their blog) for quite some time.
They do free tastings, which is pretty much heaven for a Zymurgophile... Cerevisaphile... maybe an enophile? like me...
I've been intending to share some of my finds... so... here, finally, are the two best beers I've had in a long while:
- The top choice, possibly the best beer I've ever had, is
Foret.
It's a Belgian organic beer, rumored to be in fact the only Belgian organic beer. Apparently sold outside the US as Moinette Biologique, and according to the internets I am not alone in my enthusiasm for this beer.
It's crisp and peppery and complex, and comes in a green wine-type bottle with a cork. Which might put off some of you who like beer 'cause it's cheap and unpretentious, unlike that stuff that normally comes in wine bottles. (What do you call it again?)
This, though, is $7-8, which for (I think) two pints' worth is what you'd pay at a bar for a couple Mass Market Beers.
- Flossmoor's Brown Ale, a local beer, is the other beer I'll mention today. They've been getting a lot of hype lately, partially because of this fact, that they're local and you can, if you want, actually drive down to the brewery in Chicago's south suburbs ("on the way to Grandma's house") and pick up some fresh stuff if you want. Also because it's quite delicious. I mean, we've got local beer: Goose Island and so forth, but this is BEER. It's rich and creamy, dark without losing its character the way some beers do... And it's about $10.
And berries.
And yeah, I know it's basically summer, but what does it feel like? Early spring. Spring beer. Drink up.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (67)
05.19.2008
Q. What is LIGHT?
A. The unknown cause of VISIBILITY
(from A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, ca. 1838.)
(from A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, ca. 1838.)
Art by Tiffany Bozic. Lots more at link.Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
05.10.2008
Today Kay and I dance an Argentine Tango in a dance show called BLAST on Northwestern's campus. It's movie-themed, and we're doing Casablanca. A bit different from our regular offerings...
Also, it's Fibonacci time. Happy Mother's Day!
05.05.2008
You know that thing I said about us taking a little break? 'Cause we've played every week for... 8 weeks now? Lies. We're playing this Friday (5/9) in Evanston at BooCoo cafe. See Shows Page for details, updated between now and the date.
05.02.2008
Fuji apples aren't that great. What's the best kind? I've had really good ones but I can never remember which kind it was...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (16)
05.01.2008
The residency is all done. Last night was the final show.
Ben Arthur braved the Cubs game and ensuing craazzy parking situation to play a cool set circa 6pm...
(I still got rockstar meter parking 5 feet from the load-in door, though, and Andrea called me a bad word when I texted her about it. Every week but one I've had good parking, in a neighborhood where it's usually horrific. Also last week when I forgot to feed my meter, I got no ticket— in a 'hood where the meter-readers are as vigilant as the parking restrictions.)and we had a great chat about the music business and its current WTF changes/situation/etc.
I Ching Quartet
was also fantastic— I bet no one's ever brought that many people/instruments into that space before. I've never felt like a small band, or like we have a simple setup before. Usually we're the ones giving the sound engineer fits.
Merrill Garbus— playing as tune-yards— makes my new top-5 list of best performers ever. All the looping technology of Andrew Bird or Final Fantasy, but with a tenor ukelele and a beat-boxing mic and an incredible voice and really really good songs...
The thing that struck me about the songs was the merging of beat-oriented music (which I can have trouble writing) with fluid, creatively-repetitive songwriting as opposed to the 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars 8-bars thing you normally get, even with good, catchy beat-type music. She's from Montreal and
- we totally hope she comes back, and
- we so want to go on tour up there.
Thanks to the residency for teaching us how to play in close proximity... introduce electronic beats... realize how important the good (aka heavy) keyboard is... work up the vocal harmonies a bit... potentially get something YouTube-able... and move closer to our goal of playing all the darn time this year (24 shows! here we come!)
Now we're going to take a little break. Look for random blogging, new tunes, and maybe even some video coming up.
04.28.2008
Visited my friend and soon to be neighbor Michael Parker at ARTropolis yesterday. A very cool experience, and a lot of great art.
04.24.2008
A last-minute notice!
On the 25th of April (that's tomorrow at posting time), South Loop Tango (www.southlooptango.com) will be hosting a performance by Mira Mira in conjunction with ARTropolis (http://chicagoartsdistrict.org/events_main.asp). Performance at 8pm/all ages/donations welcome!
Reasons why this will be a great show include (but are not limited to):
1) Getting to see Kay's/my dance studio and the place where Mira Mira practices.
2) Hanging out with the band/lots of friends in our space.
3) The art studios in the vicinity of SLT will all be open, and likely serving free alcohol.
4) Good music!
Check out the ARTropolis website for shuttle information. Hope to see many of you out there!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
04.23.2008
Rebecca Dautremer's art is incredible. Huzzah for children's books!
04.21.2008
Proof that art and science as well as music and science go together. **bliss**
04.14.2008
This is the part where everything just builds up to some indeterminate future date, after which I go camping. This week's show in the UCG residency is with Jason Ewers and friends (who were part of the wonderful crowd listening there last week) and also none other than our cellist Andrea with her husband Elliott Nott.
Thanks to everyone who signed up for our email list at the last show, and also my apologies if you tried to visit this site and it was down-- apparently while we were flapping our little butterfly wings at the show here in Wrigleyville, there were severe thunderstorms in Texas... which I learned is where the server hosting the site actually resides (who knew?) ...and the site went down for something like 30 hours.
This, my friends, is the power of music. And quantum uncertainty. And butterflies. And, um, thunderstorms.
Also, we're playing at our space on Friday, April 25. It'll be a party, and a chance to hang out... and a show. So if you want to meet your favorite Myriad, come on by.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
04.04.2008
One of my students forwarded me this mp3 the other day.
The noble Internets have so far been unable to tell me who made it. It's on YouTube and Metacafe, but see, when you upload to those sites, they super-compress the file, and since it was compressed (mp3) to begin with... well, it kind of messes with the binaural-filter effects of the recording. So! If this is yours, sorry to post it here without your permission. I'd love to give you credit or link to your actual site. Please say hi. Otherwise, for everybody else... this is a cool sound experience.
The thing you need to know is: Binaural listening requires headphones. If you just put this on through your speakers you'll be left with nothing but some cheesy voices, and wonder what all the fuss was about. The total 100% separation you get between the two channels is what makes the experience immersive, what makes someone able to walk "behind" you or have a sound move "over" your head, instead of just pan left-to-right.
Also, none of the other blogs Google told me about go much into what this type of recording is, or how or why it works. The (relatively) short explanation is that there are two reasons we hear sound as coming from a certain location:
- The sound hits your ears at two different times, and/or
- The sound hits your ears at two different volume levels.
These two will give you simple left-right information.
- The sound has been filtered by your ears, and
- The sound has been partially blocked by your head.
This is what gives you front-back information. I really had to think about this the first time someone brought it up, but if your ears were just hearing-points, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between straight-ahead and directly-behind. But our funny-shaped ears absorb and block out specific frequencies from sound, so if those frequencies are lowered when the signal hits our brain, the brain says "behind".
- Last, sounds that happen very close appear to be more bass-heavy, in what's called the "proximity effect"... this is why the clippers (and even the scissors!) really roar when they're right by your ear, and also why radio announcers have those insanely grounded, gravitas-laden voices-- they're just right up on the mic.
So, in recording you can either (1) set up a somewhat realistic dummy-head with mics in the ears, so the sound gets the same treatment it would with a person's head, or else (2) record the sound normally, and then process it somehow to simulate ear-absorbtion and whatnot. Most of the time it seems like you either want this kind of recording, or you don't, and so the dummy-head thing is most common. However, some other folks are working on the algorhythm approach-- for example, for binaural post-processing to give craaazy headphones-only mixes for music like Cornelius did on "Point".
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (183)
04.01.2008
Warm fuzzies! http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-farmers-market-effect/
This is of course after I read the article that claimed that the Department of Defense has a budget higher than the FDA, NSF, and NASA combined. One step at a time.
And while I'm on the topic of budgets, this made everyone in the lab chuckle/wince: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/401/1
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03.31.2008
This is the part where, despite a lack of sleep and general blag (blah?) I post the poster for our upcoming shows. And tell you about how the camcorder we used to tape our show on Thursday has gone missing, so if you happen to (a) know anything about it, or (b) want to help us replace it... let us know.
Update (3pm): Apparently the camera is safe and sound at the venue. I'm going to go pick it up! If you still want to get me a birthday present, though, you'll get no arguments from me ;)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (68)
03.17.2008
Last night was a lot of fun. Thanks to those who came, listened, cheered for songs new and old. We've got some handmade posters still, so give a holler if you'd like one. We can hook you up.
Surprise new show! As we announced from the stage, we'll be back at Sub-t next week Thursday to play as part of the AVXplo thing the Midstates are putting on with some other folks. Here's the flyer:
02.29.2008
Ryan Duggan screens a mighty fine poster. It's our first handmade, show-specific poster and boy oh boy oh boy do we feel cool.
Look for these around town, and at Sub-t the night of the show.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (67)
02.16.2008
For real. This is worth the 8-and-a-half minutes. A bit of a slow start, but... makes me want to safari. And/or start some community organizing. For some reason.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
02.12.2008
First things first, we had lots of fun at our show last week at Uncommon Ground with Tad Dreis and Ben Sollee. Both those guys were class acts. Thanks to those who braved the snow storm of aught eight to make it there!
On a different note (haha, note. music. get it?), Charlie sent me this article yesterday, and it really struck a chord (second pun also fully intended).
Impromptu music making is...well...not the norm. But in a culture where so many people love music, not to mention wish that they had the time to make music, shouldn't things like "community sings" become a common event? No practice necessary, no scheduling around a time. Just show up when you can.
Cultural revolution, anyone? Who's with me!?
01.30.2008
I have spent the past two weeks with Ben Sollee's myspace page open in my browser. The classical/folksy/sometimes dance inspired music with his 1930's smoky jazz voice is quite all right by me! Yeesh! Since I change my favorite song of his daily, your best bet is just to scroll through them all.
Can't wait to play with him on Feb 6th!
01.27.2008
Ben Sollee is the coolest and we're looking forward to playing with him at Uncommon Ground Feb. 6.
The electronics which have been missing from our recent live performances will be reborn, at least partially, for this show. Earlier today Nick and I were trying to make the ribbon controllers sound like a theremin (after being inspired by the Cornelius show last week at the Metro) but we couldn't quite figure it out.
Schmüdde needs to help us. Help us, Schmü!
01.23.2008
Since a stock's price can go to zero much more easily than it can go to infinity, why isn't the primary form of trading short selling?
01.15.2008
New things: The title of this website & blog. The way I'm organizing my inbox. The books I'm buying online. The dorky certification I'm likely to get this summer, through work.
8 new songs in the ether, waiting to ripen and be plucked in our wintry rehearsals.
The draft version of Music for Scientists, up at Last.fm
Also I have a new phone, which plays Thomas Newman when it rings. I lost my old ringtone when the old phone split in two. This one is nice too. (I can't stand built-in ringtones, they make me want to throw small expensive electronics into the sidewalk.)
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (65)
12.25.2007
Full of Xmas dinner, sitting in Mom's kitchen listening to the Amelie soundtrack... talking to my sister about jobs and apartments, having cold toes 'cause no one will turn up the heat, thinking about how I should go work on those lyrics that have been floating around in my head.
Happy Holidays and New Year. See you in '08, everybody.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
12.21.2007
Despite being denied milk at the bar (and then getting made fun of), I thought that the show last night at Martyrs' went preeeeetty well. Rah rah! If you missed it, we have another show coming up this Sunday, the 23rd. We're headlining at The Empty Bottle with Marla Hansen and Fingers and Toes (show starts at 9pm, we play at 11pm).
In the spirit of good press, Chazz Williams was interviewed by Radio Free Chicago. Check it out here!
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12.20.2007
I have now heard about www.freerice.com from several different sources, including NPR, so it must be for real.
The more frequently people play this game, the more frequently the ads are changed, the more money is made, the more money can be donated to the United Nations World Food Program. Not to mention it improves your vocabulary...it was designed by a man who was helping his son study for the SATs. Apparently, the boy's younger brother was making fun of him every time he would get a word wrong, and the website allowed him to work in silence.
Speaking of improved vocabulary and helping the hungry - Mira Mira has a show tonight! Come out to Martyrs' to hear us perform a sweet set.
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12.16.2007
Playing on WLUW was a blast as usual, thanks to the hosting chops of Melissa of the "Full on Fridays" show. Science-related conversations aplenty. After playing, Kay and Nick and I loaded out and went straight to a wedding... not that you could tell, but we did our on-air in our suits & ties. Or maybe you could tell. Did we sound cleaner? More formal?
Also, we're included in Flavorpill this week, with a really sweet capsule review:
The hushed, autumnal chamber pop of Chicago's Mira Mira seems so tailor-made for an evening of wine and friendly conversation, it's hard to imagine it played in any other context. That is, until Charlie Williams' tasteful piano textures explode into a galloping crescendo, rushing to keep up with the sweeping cello. (Fans of ambient bliss-pop like Eluvium will find much to love here.) The follow-up to the band's sure-footed 2005 debut, Midnight for You, is in the can, but not yet released, so keep an ear out for a wispy new gem or two. --Stephen GossettPosted by charlie williams | Comments (2)
12.12.2007
So, Starbucks. I haven't been there in a while (cf. Hi Tea) but but but... there was one right there, it was on my way from a rehearsal, etc.
Excuses. Here's the deal:
middle-sized Mocha - $3.65extra flavor shot - $.30
middle-sized Peppermint Mocha - $4.05
I asked, and you don't get anything extra by ordering the official drink, rather than "I'd like a Mocha with a shot of peppermint". It's just ten cents cheaper if you do it that way.
Not that anyone would have figured that the Starbucks pricing scheme had any parity with the worth of their goods. I just hadn't yet let go of the idea that one drink would correspond to one price. Is the extra ten cents a "convenience charge" for not having to order the flavor shot separately?
No, it's because they can. Because going to Starbucks, carrying that cup down the street, is a ritual that says "I am an affluent consumer" and that keeps you from doing the math while you're standing at the counter waiting to order.
P.S. Extra points for anyone who wants to rewrite this in the style of another band (Pearl Jam/pissed-off, Magnetic Fields/analytical, Godspeed!/Marxist, Fall Out Boy/corporate whore)...
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (3)
12.11.2007
Occasionally I fall prey to gear lust. This time it's the iPod touch.
What I'm waiting for (besides the iPhone 2.0 and enough money to buy it) is one of these devices with a mini-Capslock keyboard on them. I had this half in my head and then Dave just put it the rest of the way in my head by making a joke about it.
For those of you who aren't familiar, it's a way of simulating a piano keyboard using the keys of your computer keyboard. In a music writing program, you hit the 'Caps Lock' key and a little floating keyboard comes up and you can play in your musical idea without having an outside USB keyboard connected. This is especially helpful when you're at a cafe, for instance, or your mom's house, and an idea suddenly strikes.
So, Apple: in the iPod touch, put a super-lite version of garageband or something. Simple, mini-instruments-- could be just synth for all I care-- and 8 drum pads. Then you hit the special key and the touch interface turns into a music-making area... keys or drum pads to hit. Lightly.
Then again, I've heard Apple has a couple of patents out for more or less this idea, but in a device you'd plug into your computer. Maybe it's on its way. The technology in the iPhone/iPod touch is basically what they'd need to do this other product.
C'mon, Santa!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (0)
12.10.2007
I just had to turn on moderation of comments 'cause someone's trying to sell Propecia or whatever to you, gentle reader.
75 comments in 12 hours.
Oh SPAM. I knew thee, Horatio!
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (64)
11.30.2007
Slew. That is how many shows MM has in December. A slew of shows. One slew.
The first being this weekend at Lilly's (check out the "shows" page for more info)! Stop on by to hear a new lineup of songs (including a rather unconventional rendition of an 80's favorite), drink one of Lilly's famous Long Islands, and watch us in action. It'll go a little something like this video:
11.22.2007
Happy Thanksgiving, folks. And damn the drink laws.
Anyone out there excited for the Golden Compass movie? I am unreasonably excited.
11.20.2007
After a bit of a... how you say... oh, a bit conventional (but illustrative) opening, this article by David Brooks in today's NY Times raises issues I've been thinking about concerning the segmentation of our society. (Many sorts of this, of course, and they're interrelated. Here I'm mostly talking about music, though.)
His two biggest points are:
- Culture in general, but especially music, is becoming more segemented along race/class lines.
- Niche, or low-fi, or "segment-friendly" music succeeds (on an 'indie' level at least) in part because everyone can make it now, in their bedrooms, and instantly publish it to the whole world.
When it comes to Steve Van Zandt's contention that this leads to lousy music, though, this argument is ignoring the selective effects of time— there's always been loads of new, lousy music. We just have the luxury, when looking at the past, of having already forgotten the forgettable, and enshrined the transcendent.
In other words: We tend to compress all of history into "The Past" and compare it to "The Present"...
People writing songs in this fashion are often unconsious of the context within which they're operating. This isn't to say you'll write better songs if you can explain how your music fits into the last 50 years of songwriting, how your chord progressions and voicings differ from Byrd's or the Byrds (or Bird's or, what the hey, Hermann's) or Dylan's or Spektor's.
So... you'll write better music if you're intimately familiar with that music and lots more besides. If you sing together with friends, or at least in a choir and not just to the radio, if you've tried drumming and piano and guitar and clarinet and violin. If you've sat in a drum circle. If you've danced Samba (or Tango). When you're so close to all this cultural stuff that it's inside of you, it can't help but come out in whatever you're creating.
That's not to say it'll necessarily be good, either. Plenty of well-listened people make lousy music, and on the other hand there are geniuses out there who end up making a post-Waits album without ever having heard Tom's stuff.
But it sure increases your chances. If I'm stuck I often find that a half-day of just listening to things I love, or things my friends love, will unstick my ideas. And I write best if I can forget about what I know and just listen.
At the end of the article, Brooks talk about Van Zandt's plan to make kids smarter in the music way and in the book way at the same time:
Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He's drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He's trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.
This article was cool too. Crazy people who are fascinated by the world, woot.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (3)
11.11.2007
Think about the word "movies" for a second. Now compare it to "talkies", for example-- you know, what they called the first pictures with synchronized sound. Now think about people first calling them "movies"... you know, because they move. (What a bunch of yokels!)
Are you now one step closer to being one of those people who always refer to them as "films"? Yeah, me too.
"Two nights ago, I was talking with some local artists about things that used to be cool and weren't anymore -- the things that we missed. These artists were mostly kids, so they missed some really stupid stuff, I thought, like Adam Ant and giant shoulder-pads in women's clothes. I told them that I missed 'standing alone' -- the whole idea that 'standing alone' was an okay thing to do in a democracy."
(that last from Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, which is the book I always want to buy for everyone. Especially artists, but really everyone. It's that good.)
11.08.2007
A Science Related Game!!
Some people get to talk with Danny Elfman at their jobs. I have spent the past three days staring at DNA sequencing (atgc repeated over and over in different combinations (not permutations)) and its corresponding amino acid sequence. Amino acids are traditionally represented with a letter of the alphabet. Those letters are (in no particular order):
FLSYCWPHQRIMTNKVADEG
SOMEtimes...amino acid sequencing spells out words to me. Tuesday I got the word Vanilla.
Best word wins a drink from me at the next Mira Mira show you attend. Extra credit for anyone who reverse transcribes the amino acid word into nucleotides!
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11.06.2007
Perk of day job: On Halloween evening, I got to be part of a conference call with Danny Elfman.
Yesterday I wrote a whole song in my head and then promptly forgot it. Where's my memory? Where's my head?
Lastly, last night I had a dream wherein I was in an upstairs bedroom with peeling wallpaper which had been scored with a razor blade so that it was coming off in these little one-inch perfect squares. The floor had been "floorpapered" too and I was sitting on a bed writing music on a laptop. The regions were all different colored and much more organized than when I write music.
After I woke up I wished I had synesthesia so I could remember more of how that song went. The colors were still there in my head, but they didn't mean anything to me anymore.
11.01.2007
Top 5 Chicago Bars
Cal's (Loop) - Filthy bar with loud punk music on the weekends. Ohh and by the way, located in the heart of the financial district. You do the math.
Laschet's Inn (Irving Park) - Best beer in the city. Great staff. Don't be surprised if the bar bursts out in to olde German song. The food - incredible.
Boni Vino (Loop, Van Buren) - Found this review of Boni Vino online (reposted without any edits):
"I couldn't believe it when the boss made the waitress cry. the two owners were fighting publicly about family matters, and destroyed my appetite. i will never return to that so-called restaurant. besides, it's dirty!"
I couldn't have written a more accurate account of the place. There's always trouble brewing. Plus big, cheap pizza slices. Perfection.
Delilah's (Lincoln and Diversey) - Attitude in Lakeview. Great music. Better whiskey.
Stocks 'n Blondes (Loop, Washington and Wells) - Home sweet home. The best regulars in the city. Then again, I might be a biased regular. Bonus: Perhaps the least attractive patrons in the city.
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10.31.2007
I walked into Charlie and Kay's place the other evening for rehearsal, and the place smelled great. Kay had just made a batch of baked apples and offered me one. If that isn't band love, I don't know what is.
We have kick-ass new additions to the band. Kay, Nick, and Pete have been great to work with and get to know. If you ever see Kay, Nick, or Pete at one of our shows, talk to them -- they're the coolest.
Happy Halloween,
Andrea the Cellist
(If I had a myspace, facebook, or friendster page, I'd be Monk Girl)
10.31.2007
Riding to work this morning it occurred to me that having a shared lane for buses and bikes is sort of like having a shared pen at the zoo for cheetas and lemurs.
Anyone want some cats?
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
10.30.2007
They say the first time you're just reading the paper and turn the page and right there they've got a review of your CD... is pretty cool.
We were the one with the arrow next to us in NewCity, and the show was Critic's Choice in the Reader. Made my day.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (63)
10.29.2007
Nick forgot to mention that there are photos from the show up on the photos page. Thanks to Nuria McNeal for shooting during the show, and for running to get batteries when the ones we had were dead.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (66)
10.28.2007
Wooo first real post!! That's all I really had. Hmmm...oh yes! I played my first "official" show this last weekend. Pretty decent Schuba's crowd I thought. They seemed pretty receptive to the newly rockin' Everything is Happening and my whistling solo in Masterfade...oh gimmicks. A couple minor train wrecks but I think they were much more apparent to us than the audience.
They seemed impressed by the new babe (eww I can't say that) on vocals and bass and the mysterious shirtless drummer with the soft yet articulate rhythms. If nothing else I'd say we showed where we're going with stuffff. Normal pro performances from Chaz and the Schmudde (side project band name?)
I guess a fan made a bootleg video of part of our Schubas' Set.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0
We appreciate feedback.
More irrelevant posts on the way!
Nick
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10.23.2007
Saw on Sunday night: Joanna Newsom at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, accompanied by a 29-piece orchestra and her band. In lieu of my own review, which I'm not qualified to write, I direct you to this article on pitchfork, which reviews a live show with just her band — not an orchestra — but talks at some length about what I found so charming about the concert and what I find rewarding about Newsom's music.
10.21.2007
My personal top five dive bars in Chicago:
Danny's (in Wicker Park/Bucktown) has this amazing ambiance brought about by the old-farmhouse layout inside (giving lots of nooks and crannies to talk with friends or, uh, cuddle) the pencil spotlight in the main room making you feel like an underground cultural hero in a private club, the rotating art installations on the walls, and the complete lack of signage out front except the vintage neon Schlitz above the door. Also $4 Belgian beer night.
Skylark (in Pilsen) has cheap PBR, great food, a photo booth and isn't totally overrun by hipsters most of the time. The jukebox has this strange interaction with the room where it sounds like a live band playing, only quieter.
Cuneen's (on Devon St. between Edgewater and Rogers Park) is bartended on Thursday nights by Dan Savage's bro Randy Bill, who's also a NU professor by day. They have a pool table and an impressive collection of vinyl, and despite the proximity to Loyola they're not overrun by underage Loyola students.
Stocks and Blondes (Loop, Washington & Wells) is, despite the name, the best bar in the loop. The service here feels like you're in a 5-star restaurant, but you're not worried about how much you might accidentally spend. The quesadillas are great and Josh remembers every drink he's ever poured. The impressive array of regulars have been immortalized by a series of plaques reserving their favorite seats in perpetuity.
Red Line Tap (Rogers Park) has some sentimental appeal as my old neighborhood bar, but you can't beat $2 specials and free bluegrass every Tuesday. Food from the Heartland restaurant next door is great, so as long as there's not a painfully loud band playing this is a far-north-side destination.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (62)
10.19.2007
The scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
- Vivian Bloodmark
Therefore, the scientifically inspired poet (not to mention the poetically inspired scientist) would have a head start, I should think!
First non-Charlie post...hello out there in internet land! There is a chance that you will see many a nerd posting from me in the future. But before I start regaling tales of science, out of curiosity, is there anyone out there interested in helping out with advertising related Mira Mira stuffs? Any amount of effort would be welcome. Some things we're currently looking for help with are:
- Finding public-domain scientifically related pictures/video (thanks to Andrew Suprenant from 137 films for help with this already!)
- Postering, flyering, stickering, passing on word of mouth, flash mobbing, etc to get the word out about MM.
- Making a music video for one of the songs coming out on the new CD.
I can promise incentives of an alcoholic variety to those of you interested in helping. I cannot make promises on quality or quantity. Just let us know if you're available to help us out!
10.15.2007
So a neutron walks into a bar and orders a drink, then asks the bartender what he owes.
"For you, no charge" the bartender replies.
...and we're commentable! Thanks to John Schroeder for helping us set up that functionality.
P.S. FIVE musicians will play at Schubas: Dave, Pete, Nick, Kay and me. New arrangements of about 2/3 of the set. Beaucoup des nouvelles choses.
Posted by charlie williams | Comments (5)
10.07.2007
Nick and Peter and Kay rocked it last night. So many new musicians joining us onstage! Come see the Schubas' show (Thurs 10/25)...
Today is a day of doing nothing but napping and attempting to bake bread. Serious. Yeast explosions in our near future. Cops on Segways. Panda stores.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (63)
09.26.2007
Veering in new directions. Preparing to play with Pete and Nick for the first time. A secret preview show. Interested? Comments available soon. Get ready to be a commenter.
09.24.2007
First gig I've ever had to cancel: After being sick last week since Tuesday, I was totally unable to sing last weekend and had to sit out the Lilly's show. I was tempted to make the rest of the band sing instead, but ultimately we had to call it off. At least Nick Miller (myspace) had a great gig.
This weekend marks the opening of South Loop Tango, at the Chicago Arts District's annual open house in Pilsen. Tango lessons for $5! Come on by! Friday 6-10pm, Saturday noon-7pm, Sunday noon-7pm.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (6206)
09.12.2007
Sept. 11 flew by yesterday and I hardly noticed it. It seems like only yesterday it was 2002 and I was being handed a commemorative candle on my way into IKEA. Hard to tell where genuine commemoration leaves off and commercialization begins. In any case, there seems to be a higher percentage of genuine soul-searching as the years progress. Or maybe I'm just reading saner publications?
I'm going to put off summarizing anything else we're up to, but come hear us at Lilly's on the 22nd. It'll be our first show with new drummer Peter. We're excited. He's dying to bring a marimba but that's going to have to wait for a place a bit bigger than ol' Lilly's.
08.15.2007
Time flies! Mixing starts tomorrow on Music for Scientists. Then I'm off to LA for 2 weeks (to get signed, haha) for work. After which... more shows? Moving? Fall? Give us a heads-up.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (68)
07.19.2007
Gregg Bernstein's design and packaging for Midnight for You was just featured in a new book called Supersonic, Visuals for Music. It's a giant collection of really cool, interesting album and other music-related art. We're way too poor to buy our own copy right now, so if you want to send one over we'll smile all day.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (61)
07.12.2007
Anyone out there know how to set up Movable Type? This blogging-via-HTML thing is getting old. We're nearly guaranteed to have some kind of news soon, what with all the things bubbling away on the back of our midsummer stove in our steamy pungent metaphor of a kitchen. And updating this is a whole lot easier when I don't have to put in all the tags myself. Also the rest of the band could post... and so on. xkcd, baby.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (63)
06.28.2007
Schubas and Rosie Thomas blew our mind with amazingness and a zen-like life philosophy hidden behind an embrace-the-awkward humor. The room is great to play in and we got some great compliments after the show. Thanks to everyone who came out and made this a sold-out show! Also I really enjoyed the group of people sitting down in front, just listening. That's awesome. We're not booking anything else right away (unless something really awesome comes up) so we can finish the album in style and work on a few other secret projects.
06.20.2007
Leslie Feist herself ended up reading from Kay's paper Molecular Characterization of the Ankle-Link Complex in Cochlear Hair Cells and Its Role in the Hair Bundle Functioning (by Michalski et al.) from the stage! It was a Music for Scientists moment.
Quote: Here, we show that the transmembrane protein usherin, the putative transmembrane protein vesatin, and the PDZ (postsynaptic density-95/Discs large/zona occludens-1) domain containing submembrane protein whirlin are colocalized (she really emphasized this word) with Vlgr1 at the stereocilia base in developing cochlear hair cells and are absent in Vlgr1 -/- mice that lack the ankle links.
Also, the show was awesome. "Just imagine, there's someone in this room who understands that" she said.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
06.18.2007
We have new buttons (and new songs) ready for the June 27 Schubas' show. Kay and I went to a Darwin lecture at the Field museum last week and gave one to the famous trilobite specialist who gave the lecture.
Anyone who can get a picture of a scientist with a Mira Mira / Music for Scientists pin should email it to miramira at ickydog dot com and we'll put it up on the site.
06.08.2007
Don't say I didn't warn you. The album is recorded and I'm back in the country. In honor of our upcoming album, we've dropped the price on Midnight for You to $9.99, and added a special discount whereby you get multiple copies for $7 each. That's not the second copy at $7, that's both copies at $7 if you buy two. Or three, or ten.
04.30.2007
Photos from the Empty Bottle show are up. It was fun. We're playing Thursday and then not again for a while, because we'll be recording our follow-up EP Music for Scientists. And then I'm going to Belize.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
03.30.2007
Well, SXSW was cool. As was the guy sitting next to me on the plane; he posted some nice stuff, and an mp3 for Churches, a track from our upcoming EP Music for Scientists.
(P.S. For extra credit, estimate the number of rock points I lose for using a semicolon in my band's blog.)
Posted by miramusic | Comments (95)
02.07.2007
Another bit of press from Claire Blaustein on Blogcritics today.
An excerpt:
The layers of sound are painted watercolor style, each translucent to those underneath, giving way to a new shade, fading to a radio buzz of static remaining in the wash at the end. The instrumental "Nikita's Ghost" is creepily wonderful, strumming guitars moving with something like sirens, and voices appearing and disappearing in the murk.There is catharsis in the listening. Each time draws you further into Mira Mira's emotive process, hearts like blood-red stains on the sleeve, and makes their ability to take pain and pleasure and make music of it your own as well. You say goodbye to the good, the bad, and the just gone, and feel it all just fade away with a final buzz into sonic darkness.
Whoa. I never thought I'd inspire such poetic reviews! Also, did you know we're on Amazon?
Posted by miramusic | Comments (63)
02.02.2007
Wow! Press from Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times!
link to article, link to it on Dero's page.
My favorite bit:
"Fans of the blissful electronic/ambient pop of the Album Leaf or Sigur Ros should love the entrancing album Midnight for You."
Posted by miramusic | Comments (102)
01.22.2007
You know... I'd forgotten how cool Schmüdde's performance on those crazy ribbon controllers looks until the crowd went totally wild for it at the show Saturday. Thanks to everyone who came out. We had a lot of fun.
Wallpaper version of the new poster for future shows up. Also some photos from the show up on the 'photos' page.
Aaaaand the interview with Future Perfect Radio is up there, if you missed it before the show.
01.09.2007
FOUR awesome musicians playing at the show Jan 20: Ben and Colin together again on guitar and drums... Dave Schmüdde rejoins the herd, bringing many studio details. Poster here.
Many new songs will be played. Also, happy new year.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
12.21.2006
Happy holidays, everyone! Snow is in the air and new songs are in the works. Okay, it's rain that's in the air right now, but what better weather to listen to Mira Mira by?
Posted by miramusic | Comments (61)
11.08.2006
I guess they played us on NPR the other day. Sweet. Hello NPR listeners, pick up a CD while you're here!
Posted by miramusic | Comments (56)
11.01.2006
Booking now for the next while. Writing. Recording some in January. New songs are fun.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
10.23.2006
Quotation #842 from Michael Moncur's (Cynical) Quotations:
"Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too."
Posted by miramusic | Comments (72)
10.19.2006
What a great show that was. Tons of fun. Then I moved boxes until 4 a.m. and woke up at 7 to meet the movers. Owning a piano means you always have to hire movers. Now my feet get covered in sawdust, but only for one more day because the housewarming party is tomorrow. (Email me if you want to get invited.) Then we headline the Beat Kitchen on Sunday. I have a new keyboard that's going to rock your world.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
10.11.2006
If I ever get a moment to breathe here I promise I'll send out an email about our show this Saturday, the 14th. We're playing at the Red Line Tap up in Rogers Park (7006 N Glenwood - see shows page), the day before I move away from the neighborhood to live across the street from a monastic school. I'm playing not only with Andrea Schripsema on cello, but also with Colin Sheaff on drums. It's like chocolate and peanut butter...
Posted by miramusic | Comments (54)
09.25.2006
We're headlining at the Beat Kitchen on Oct. 22. I've started working at Columbia College. It's kind of weird having a full-time job. But I've been writing more since I started... it's like my time away from work is really my own, as opposed to when I was teaching full-time, it felt like I could write any time &emdash; wake up in the morning and write a song! -- I never did that, I woke up and read the New York Times online all day.
Anyway, this show is with cellist Andrea Schripsema. Her dad was my high school orchestra director. Small world, eh?
Posted by miramusic | Comments (550)
08.16.2006
Thanks to all those who came out to the show last night. It was a good time, I think we made some new friends/fans. And thanks of course to Danah for playing such lovely cello.
I also just posted this weekend's dance performance collaboration on the 'shows' page, so head on over and check it out.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (60)
08.13.2006
Monday morning Charlie will be appearing on DePaul's radio station WRDP to probably play a few tunes, and at the very least have a CD giveaway and promote the show on Tuesday, as well as spin some tracks off Midnight for You. Tune in at http://radio.depaul.edu (link above)
Posted by miramusic | Comments (514)
08.01.2006
We're confirmed for the show at the Beat Kitchen with The Like Young, a great Chicago duo, and Oppenheimer, a hip duo from the UK. Keeping things in line, Mira Mira will be playing in a keys + cello + two voices configuration this evening. It looks like a great bill all around, so we extra encourage you to come out for this one.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (62)
07.18.2006
Big developments are underfoot. Afoot? Which foot, we're not sure yet, but it's a good one. Look for an EP this fall with the word "Pandas" involved somehow. Also I played a solo show on Sunday at the Red Line Tap-- thanks to the investigative few who came out. I promise next time I'll do better promotionally.
I'm also looking for places with Real Pianos to play at, since I do, after all, play the piano. If you've got suggestions, please shoot me an email.
Posted by miramusic | Comments (64)
06.21.2006
Happy first day of summer, happy new website going live. Of course, no website is ever done per se, but this one suits our purposes for the moment.
Comments?
Posted by miramusic | Comments (63)
06.05.2006
Hey, check out this new website!
Testing. Testing. One, two.
Okay, looks like it works. Welcome!
Posted by miramusic | Comments (0)