Today’s concert at Magnet Club will be the last one with the usual setup. There are a lot of new things coming up that will radically change the running system. The first thing to happen will be the shift of my whole audio processing to a digital mixer and an all-integrating Max patch. I’m also going back to the roots, revising my Wahan drum kit substantially. Last but not least, the live visualization of my music will expand with the possibilities of Max. If you’re a Berlin based artist and want to contribute, let me know.
At the end of this month, a new remix single is coming up, followed by a short Germany tour. [edit: you can get it now on iTunes and Amazon.] We shot a video last year, this is Filmarche 5773, directed by Anton Hempel, camera Michael Clemens, produced by Barbara “Bob” Voss, edited by Anton Hempel.
For the last years, I have been working with a drum trigger interaction system based on an acoustic drumset and the Nord Modular G2 synthesizer. The basic idea is to control multiple step sequencers by drum hits. Like that, the musician can interact with preprogrammed note patterns in his own musical feel and timing. People keep asking me how they could reproduce this approach on their own computers and beyond that, the G2 system is somewhat limiting for such a task, especially when the compositions get more complex.
Some weeks ago I discovered the call for works for the CTM.13 MusikMakers Hacklab and proposed my idea for an interactive graph-based step sequencer. The proposal was accepted and I spent the week on CTM Festival building the prototype as a Java External for Max/MSP. The Hacklab was a very inspirational gathering of music, art and visual developers collaborating within their projects and sharing ideas and concepts. For example, Imogen Heap was working with her team on their exciting musical gloves project. I set up an electronic drum kit and my stage LED Light modules as an interface testing environment. In many conversations with other artists in the lab I developed a basic concept for the interaction between the drum kit and my sequencer prototype.
Basically, the graphical sequencer consists of a finite state machine that can be played by a musician. It is a Max object that accepts any signal (e.g. MIDI) as input and sends predefined signals to the outputs. In the graphical representation, the nodes represent musical events or any other signal that Max can handle, e.g. MIDI notes, chords, OSC messages or visualization commands. The edges connecting the nodes define the rules for the transition from one node to another over time. Multiple outgoing edges are interpreted as alternate choices, giving the possibility to express a musical composition in form of a Markov Chain.
Screenshot of the graphical sequencer in Max
I added two more things to that concept to create the possibility of interaction with this graphical composition: An emitter is a start node that listens to a specific event, e.g. a drum pad. When activated, it emits a token into the graph that will transition the nodes when it recieves the “step” signal, e.g. from the bass drum trigger. You can now play this graphical composition with a simple drum interface:
So far, that’s it for the prototype. I can’t wait to try out hacking some more complex compositions in the sequencer and include it into my live setup. But of course, there’s lots of work to do until then, and we developed additional ideas for adding conditions to the graph, to express larger musical parts in a simple graphical way. There will be a free download of the basic Max external and/or a standalone Java application later, but this may take some time.
If you’re interested in a hands-on explanation of my setup, come to my Remix Lab Session at #a2n_werkstatt during the Berlin Music Week. I will play an experimental setup together with Steve Pfaff on bass and Bernhard Range on Samples.
Today is not only Towel Day, but also the release of my third album “Interstellar Getaway”. It’s supposed to be an astronaut’s soundtrack, travelling in his spaceship between the Planets of nearby solar systems.
It was recorded at Tricone Studios located in Funkhaus Berlin and mixed by Guy Sternberg in his analog Low Swing Studio. I’m very proud of the result and the fact that this is my first album to be available on Vinyl LP!
Sebastian Arnold’s new album “Interstellar Getaway” tells the story of a lonesome space voyager. By no coincidence this relates to Seb’s live show, which may actually feel like watching someone playing the drum kit and driving a spaceship at the same time. Still focusing on the beats, his recent sound developed to a more consolidated and song-oriented form, channeling a wide palette of styles from electronica, jazz and post-rock to dubstep. This time, the great escape into the galaxy features interplanetar travelling, bitchy computer games and fast-paced flights through the stratosphere accompanied by thrilling synth basslines, 8-bit sounds and impulsive drumming with a hint of wanderlust.
Fonts In Use: Interstellar Getaway (photos © Timo Titzmann & Jakob Runge)