Mosaic Audio Project by Dean

Ok, dean had a project in his design course for college called project you. For his project he made nine symbols, each represented something (life, afterlife, growth, destruction, birth, death, stimulation, depression, evolution). The whole image together was about 5' x 5' and encased in plexiglass (sp?). To add to this, he made nine short dnb mixes which somewhat represented each of these. He burned it on a cd, and put a small portable cd, with mini-speakers, inside a plexiglass box attached to the main piece. You were able to listen to the mixes by pressing stop, play, next, previous from little cutout holes over the cd player.

The entire piece (music and art) was titled Mosaic Audio. I'll try to find a way to get the art half of the project posted here.

Anyway, I decided to post one of the mixes (sorry, I don't got time to do all 9 right now ... maybe over time if I get any free time from the studio). I'm posting this cause I thought it was a pretty bad a** project and deserved some kind of recognition (for those of you who don't know, dean is the guy I produce with).

deanb - Mosaic Audio - Life Mix - 12:17
http://partrauma.soktdesign.com/music/mix_by_deanb.mp3

I like everything about that piece except for its non-human qualities.

If those beats were played by a real drummer, and perhaps at a speed that a good human drummer could cruise along at, with some actual human tempo drift and velocity differences, I'd like it better.

It's cold and lifeless, and it ruins what might be a good piece.

Listen to some Zappa. Listen to some Modern Jazz Quartet. Listen to Rite of Spring.

Suffice it to say, I'm not saving it to my iTunes library.

I see where you're comming from. This was a drum'n'bass mix, so ... the beats are gonna be pretty fast no matter what. It's just how it is. And actually, drummers have played this fast at live dnb shows. There are usually 2-3 drummers playing in corrispondance with one another, who also play along with guitar, bass, flutes, pianos, violins, etc. It's rare, but it's there.

[QUOTE=.02] And actually, drummers have played this fast at live dnb shows. There are usually 2-3 drummers playing in corrispondance with one another, who also play along with guitar, bass, flutes, pianos, violins, etc. It's rare, but it's there.[/QUOTE]


THAT'S what I want to hear, and THAT'S what makes the visceral connection to a discerning audience. Real people, playing instruments. Even if those instruments are loop generators, and Eventide DSPs, and Leslie Speaker gas pedals, it's good to have human involvement running the knobs, sliding the sliders, fading between beats and generated voices, and having direct involvement with the generation of musical noise, as it's happening. It feels more real, and we listeners intrinsically understand that the drift we hear is because there are real people contolling the groove. None of us have millisecond-accurate metronomes beating in our guts; Any music that so unwaveringly adheres to a slave clock just sounds off.

Gimme the tech, but make sure humans are controlling it, making mistakes and drifting tempo and volume and timbres and tones. Those mistakes and drifts can be microscopically subtle, but they humanize the music and thus make it much more emotionally accessable.

All of my previous blather notwithstanding, though, I'd really like to visit a comprehensive link to Dean's full project.

Hey, this is Dean ... Danny showed me this thread and I decided to take it from here, lol. I feel you on that whole music thing, but you gotta understand that I didn't have time to produce/write 9 tracks by myself by the time it was due. Besides, with all the producing me and Danny have been doing and me going to college, mixes were the best option for me. Not only that, but I wanted to represent this project with something no one really hears much ... drum'n'bass. I wanted to express myself through DJing 9 mixes that corrisponded with the 9 symbols and meanings for the symbols. I want people to (if they don't like the music) at least respect the DJ side of it and how each song breaks off of the other and builds up to produce the meaning of the symbol it is representing.

I'm sorry, but I don't have a website for this project. I may get one up with Dannys help in the future. We're busy right now, so a finished school project is the least of my worries. :-)

Oh ... and humans do control producing. Even if it seems repetative, there is a lot of work involved ... like lots. But anyway ... funny you mention humans ... we're workin on a track called Human Error.

Please put together a rudimentary site, if only just a list of audio files. I look forward to following your progress, Dean, and need a place to bookmark online so I can return easily. I like your ideas, and can see real room for growth.

And now that you have the trax that real musicians can work and learn from, hook up with some real musos, rehearse, work hard and do some LIVE gigs!

If you've never done it on a regular basis, be prepared. Working live is an an amazing, scary rush! NOTHING compares to sharing musical ESP with other players in front of an expectant audience.

Cheers, Dean.

We both know the feeling of live playing. And I know what you mean by sharing musical ESP. We do that all the time in the studio when we are producing. I would go into the argument on how hard it is to produce a track (and how special that is when its only done by one or two people) but I don't wanna write a book. It takes a lot of time, math, deep knowledge of the machines you're working with, the know-how on mastering/eqing sounds, beats, and bass. And the skills to be able to put it all together and make it sound right. It's basically like drawing a picture with sound and takes a lot of time, effort, concentration, patience, skill, knowledge, and love for the music. I mean, to list the amount of effects, filters, sounds, etc that you have at your whim is ... well ... oblivious to the imagination. And to be able to use the right sounds with each other and create timeless breaks and configurations to bring things in and out of your listeners ear, shaping their mind with the song with sounds that one might not even know exsists is just ... intense.

I dunno, it kinda seems like you don't respect drum'n'bass as much as it deserves it ... but I can understand why. For a lot of people it would take them to actually see the process of creating a dnb track to fully respect, understand and know what the producer goes through to make that "repatative and 'non-live'" tune. To me, it's just amazing what two people can come up with and control.

there is some drum in bass thing going on here in seattle, there are posters pasted up everywhere its like portland vs seattle called laptop battle or something.