The UW DJ club is hosting a charity party in the Student Life Centre (SLC) on campus at UW. I will be playing a live breaks/DnB set from 2:30PM-4:00PM. I am quite excited. I have never played on campus before, nor with the UW DJ club. It should be quite fun. I will probably be hanging out in the SLC with my gear in case anyone wants to play, learn, or teach. Just look for a guy with a small midi controller keyboard.

I am guessing most of the other DJs will be playing some popular records with the tables, but I am just going to freestyle it with my laptop and midi controller for an hour and a half. As long as I can keep some beats and breaks going down the without overloading my computer with crazy effect chains I should be good. This will be my second live performance. At an hour and a half long, I just hope I can find enough cool material to draw from to play it out smoothly.

Here is the DJ lineup for today’s FSA Charity Event:

11:30am -1:00pm DJ Tin Lok (Andrew)
1:00pm - 2:30pm DJ Colin Bell (Colin)
2:30pm - 4:00pm The Inner Space Cowboy (Jason)
4:00pm - 5:30pm DJ Laika (Hunter)
5:30pm - 7:00pm DJ soulpepper (Jen)
7:00pm - 8:30pm DJ Adrian (Adrian)
8:30pm - 10:00pm MixMasterAlan (Alan)
10:00pm - 11:30pm DJ Karts (Kartik)

Why I blog this? It is a charity event, so if you are around the Waterloo area today please come out and show your support. As well, please spread the word of this charity event to your friends. All proceeds from this charity goes toward the Hurricane Katrina victims. Oh, and do not forget to go to the Bomber afterwards! And remember, I am playing a live set from 2:30PM to 4:00PM! Come dance!

The Australian didgeridoo or yidaki is a simple wind instrument, yet a good player can coax from it a variety of timbres greater than that of many an orchestral instrument. It can produce a huge variety of different timbres, despite it usually playing only a single note. A study of the vocal tract and lip contortions necessary for this feat tells us a lot about how music is made.

To understand this phenomenon, researchers led by Joe Wolfe of the University of New South Wales in Sydney simultaneously measured the sound produced by the didgeridoo and the acoustic impedance of the player’s vocal tract. What they found was that a skilled player alters the acoustics inside their mouth to set up strong resonances at certain frequencies. Players enhances certain frequencies while inhibiting others, much as different vowel sounds are produced by adopting different positions for the tongue and vocal cords. In other words, experienced players are using their glottis to accentuate the instrument’s tonal variation.

Skilled didgeridoo players do this subconsciously, Wolfe says: “None of the players to whom we’ve spoken is aware of it.” But the creation of these characteristic frequency bands, called formants, is what gives their playing expression and variety. “It’s easy to make a basic sound,” Wolfe says. “Then you have to learn circular breathing. Learning to make strong formants takes a while. Other techniques involve vocalizing and playing at the same time: one gets interactions between the vibrations from the lips and from the vocal cords.”

via news@nature.com, PhysOrg, Acoustics: The vocal tract and the sound of a didgeridoo (Abstract)

Why I blog this? Over the past few months I have been learning about as much as I can take in about acoustics, synthesizers, and music in general, so this article instantly grabbed my attention. Also, a good friend of mine has been playing didg for a number of months now, and I have been able to watch the dramatic improvement in her playing skills during that time. Thus, this story about the acoustics of the didgeridoo was quite interesting to me.

iUpload Perspectives Applied (what’s this):

 Tags: didgeridoo, acoustics

Sometimes you need a way to get quality audio input from a portable device, but most MP3 players just do not cut it. Fortunately a little buck goes a long way when it comes to music production technology in 2005. A few portable digital recorders from Edirol have caught my attention recently. I will be in the market for a digital recorder when I create my completely portable music production setup.

Edirol R-1 Portable 24-Bit WAVE Recorder & Player (PDF Brochure)

• 8 quality modes ranging from 64 kbps compression to 24-bit linear WAV.
• Maximum recording time is approximately 137 minutes (MP3, 64 kbps mode)with included 64MB CompactFlash card.
• Record via two built-in omni-directional microphones, external mic, or line inputs.
• Completely solid state design means no noise for the internal microphones to pick up.

Samples of a sax and guitar using the R-1’s internal stereo mics are available in two formats (original 24-bit/44.1Hz and downsized 160kps MP3).

This one gets tagged wishlist. Look at spending ~400USD for an Edirol R-1. For good measure, add as much memory as you want, such as an extra 1GB of CF memory for ~70USD. Hopefully you will not be dead broke after placing one of these useful pieces of hardware into your setup.

If you are really serious, you can consider adding even more function to your portable setup with the R-1’s big brother, the R-4 Four Channel Portable Recorder & WAVE Editor, but the R-4 will set you back ~1600USD.

The Edirol products get some coverage because two of the blogs I read, Create Digital Music and Gizmodo, have posted about the R-1. And because I have been impressed with my Edirol PCR-30 keyboard, so much so that my next purchase will likely be another Edirol product. It is great because it allows me so much hardware control in my music production software at a reasonable price. It is a different level of control to have physical knobs and sliders at my fingertips. And of course I needed a keyboard to record sequencer input.

Why I blog this? A friend of a friend from the UW DJ club (found their mailing list archives but not their site) mentioned he needed something better than his MP3 player to record his live sets. And when the times comes, I will be looking for portable recording hardware to use in my mobile music production setup.