#1

As part of the FluCoMa project (created by @tremblap (and helped along by @jamesbradbury93)) I created this performance for a festival towards the end of last year.

I think I posted the link to this a while back, so thatā€™s not the release part of this. What is the ā€œreleaseā€ is the epic blog post that Iā€™ve just finished which details all the thinking and motivation behind it. Given the length (14.6k words(!!)) itā€™s kind of a little book vs a normal blog thing, so I thought it might warrant a ā€œreleaseā€ category entry.

Here it is:
https://rodrigoconstanzo.com/2020/08/kaizo-snare/

It covers a lot of ground, including the FluCoMa stuff (machine-learning and signal decomposition), as well as turntablism, my general approach to snare, onset detection, audio descriptors, 3d-printing, robotics, etcā€¦ I also get into some of the details of stuff that wasnā€™t included and where the overall idea will go next.

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#2

This is really great, and as an improvising percussionist, totally inspiring!

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#3

Thanks!

It was great getting into all the details of the playing techniques and approaches. And Iā€™m super glad I filmed little tidbits and examples the whole time I was working on things so I could use them in the blog post.

I knew it was gonna be a chunky one, but I had no idea how absolutely massive it would getā€¦

Iā€™ve done fairly comprehensive blogs for each project Iā€™ve done since finishing my PhD, but this is the single longest blog Iā€™ve ever written.

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#4

This is incredible! Great work :clap::clap::clap:

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#5

this was great. Going to go back to it more thoroughly when not on a tiny screen, because itā€™s so rich, and I want to watch the videos.

Particularly enjoyed all the stuff on the materiality of faders (much of which is familiarā€¦). Always like diving into things like that.

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#6

Hah, yeah.

Itā€™s one of those things that seems reasonable as youā€™re doing things, but afterwards you realize how far down a rabbit hole youā€™ve gone. (not saying unreasonable-ness is bad, but just in terms of time and effort spent)

That saga continues on now, as Iā€™m looking into contactless faders and want to figure out a way to have something with equally high resolution, but that feels nicer.

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#7

Wow, this is so great, I love the performance and the level of detail in the write up. I barely understand it but itā€™s so fun to get access to someoneā€™s deep diveā€¦

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#8

Thanks!

I totally love reading stuff like this, but sadly it isnā€™t something that many people do, or do in this way.

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#9

I should note that when I say ā€œlove diving into stuff like thatā€, I meant more your writeup! Watching somebody spend the time really getting to grips with that, and documenting it, and spending the time making it clear - itā€™s super-valuable, but itā€™s also a rare insight into a deep/long thought process, as opposed to design disappearing into ā€œI decided toā€ or ā€œX was the bestā€. Really good stuff.

Also: the gap between ā€˜feelā€™ and ā€˜what you get for freeā€™ - like, lots of nice ā€˜feelingā€™ instruments are layers of code on top of the limitations of hardware, as you explored. I think optical faders are a good place to go for feel and precision - at that size of object, itā€™s not the DAC reading it thatā€™s the limitation. Good luck!

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#10

Iā€™m eyeballing one of the bigger Innofader (PNP2 perhaps) to see if the feel (capacitive/contactless) is worth the tradeoff in resolution (10 vs 14bits). Having tried one of the smaller Innofaders on a friends proper mixing desk, it definitely feels good.

I wish I knew about the mechanical aspects of all of this go to full-tilt on a high-res and great feeling DIY thing, but Iā€™m kind of shooting in the dark testing out the options out there.

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#11

I guess this makes the most sense to post here as itā€™s another performance of the same ā€œpieceā€.

But @Angela finally got around to bouncing out this performance from late last year. We had only just gotten our Blackmagic camera, and fucked the ISO settings, but since got a good plugin for denoising the footage so itā€™s usable.

Itā€™s interesting listening back to this as it was just a couple of weeks after the performance in the initial post here, so I was quite fresh with all of it.

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