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.

Sebastian Arnold – Fly To Mars on YouTube.

Tour Dates Spring 2013

• 14.03.13 BERLIN Magnet Club (with DDIY)
• 05.04.13 HAMBURG Astra Stube (Filthy Diamonds)
• 11.04.13 GIESSEN Ulenspiegel
• 12.04.13 WÜRZBURG Kellerperle (supporting Wrongkong)
• 13.04.13 NÜRNBERG Kunstkulturquartier K4 (supporting Wrongkong)

There will be more information on the single parts of my setup as soon as I got them running. See you all soon!

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.

• Imogen Heap’s Glove Project
• Wikipedia Articles on Finite State Machines and Markov Chains
• Heise.de Article MusicMakers Hack Lab: Fünf Tage Experimente
• createdigitalmusic.com MusikMakers Hacklab Report

Fonts In Use: Interstellar Getaway (photos © Timo Titzmann & Jakob Runge)

And I got a lot of nice reviews for the music: Jazz-House-Schule on alternativenation.de, Der Einsame Reisende im Weltraum on regioactive.de and even Noisy Neighbours seem to really like the album in their #36 edition.

In September, I will finally start for another short but exciting Germany Tour:

• 21.09. O-TON Mannheim
• 22.09. PROVISORIUM Nürtingen (mit VegA)
• 25.09. WALDSEE Freiburg
• 26.09. HOTEL EUROPA Aachen
• 28.09. DAMEN UND HERREN E.V. Düsseldorf
• 02.10. GLEIMTUNNEL PARTY Berlin (see the article here)

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.

You can get the CD or LP+Download on the beeah–music Shop page. The Album is also available for download at iTunes, Amazon and Musicload.

See you tonight at the release party!

Sebastian Arnold – Molecular Shower by sebastianarnold

Sebastian Arnold – Fruit Mountain (Level 2) FREE DOWNLOAD by sebastianarnold

Right now I am preparing for the upcoming concerts, workshops and some video performances. Check out the nice list of tour dates:

• 10.03. ASTRA STUBE Hamburg
• 06.04. ANTJE ØKLESUND Berlin
• 13.04. SORGENFREI Straubing
• 14.04. NÜRNBERG.POP CLUB Zwinger, Nürnberg
• 26.04. AALTRA Chemnitz
• 27.04. SINWALD FESTIVAL Leipzig
• 22.05. WASCHHAUS Potsdam
• 25.05. MARIE-ANTOINETTE Berlin (ALBUM RELEASE)
• 16.06. FAB*LAB Bremen
• 07.07. STROGA FESTIVAL Stroga

More dates are still to be announced. Check the tour dates on the right for more information about times and venues as well as Facebook events.

For the flight I had to downsize my setup to just the Nord Modular G2, Nord Rack and the trigger pad. I took a netbook with me to handle the Loopdeck stuff and used a stage mixer the venue provided. While rearranging the devices, I realized how many problems I have solved over time in my normal setup. For example, I was missing the mixer light (essential on dark stages with video projection) and my DBX master compressor (makes it more easy to provide a steady master level), had to recreate multiple mixer busses for my own monitoring and also couldn’t take the MIDI router with me. It has some logic build inside to handle some things the Nord Modular is not able to do, e.g. starting and stopping its own master clock.

Finally, I was really excited and had a great show with lots of people coming to Boiler. The setup was unusual to play, but everything went well and sounded pretty good, with me freaking out totally on Low Flight and people dancing all night! Many German-speaking people live in Cluj, so they really liked the song Mnemesys with the German lyrics. The image on the left was taken from Laura’s blog post on that night at Boiler Club. Her post includes many pictures of the show and seems to be really enthusiastic if the Google translation was right – I really enjoy getting such a feedback!

After my own show, I joined Florin and Lu from 7th Spere on stage, a local club music project with DJ and visuals. The set was totally improvised and we played another hour and put up some really inspiring grooves in a moderate club tempo. I’m really thankful they asked me to do a video interview and produced a documentary about our collaboration which you can see here:

(Update: this is now the video about my solo concert, you can find the documentation about 7th Sphere feat. Sebastian Arnold here and the full live set on SoundCloud.)

I met a lot of nice people on the following day in Cluj. We were jamming in the rehearsal space of Norbert, who was so kind to lend me his cymbals for the concert. His band is currently working on new songs that base on electronic productions and I was asked to bring in some of my ideas and experiences in that area. Finally, we met 7th Sphere Project again for the interview at a teahouse.

I want to thank Fabian and Ildikó for the invitation and their great support. These were some impressive days in Cluj and I’ll try to come back as soon as possible.

• Wikipedia Article on Cluj
• Deutsches Kulturzentrum Klausenburg

Electronic Setup

After jamming with a friend’s Boss RC-20 I decided to integrate live looping in my setup. Since I haven’t found any device that completely suits my needs as a drummer, I started to build my own looper device: the Loopdeck. It’s a portable device that fits into a 19″ rack and runs a minimal Linux system with Jesse Chappell’s excellent SooperLooper software. I can control two syncronized stereo loops via MIDI, e.g. using my drumsticks on the trigger pad and get visual feedback on the MIDI controller (a FaderFox LV2). See also my post containing the MIDI signal flow.

The device is built into a rack-mountable 19″ MiniITX case and bases on the Intel D945GCLF2 Mainboard with an Intel Atom 330 Processor (2 Cores, 1.6 GHz). The system boots from a 16GB Kingston SSD hard drive, MIDI and audio in/out is provided by an M-Audio Delta 1010LT PCI card. There is no screen or input device attached.

Loopdeck Signal Flow

Loopdeck interior

The system runs a customized Debian Linux (6.0 squeeze) with a minimal 2.6.33.9-rt31 realtime kernel and boots from a read-only partition on the SSD in under 10 secs. All services are automatically started and supervised (e.g. restarted on failure) by daemontools. These include the JACK audio server for low-latency audio, SooperLooper with two stereo loops, the nice JackTube for audio processing and the FluidSynth software synthesizer which I use to play piano, Rhodes and Wurlitzer soundfonts. Everything is connected using JACK and a self-written Python script which converts incoming MIDI message to OSC signals, provides MIDI feedback for loop and system states and even controls some light modules connected via USB serial port. More on this later…

• SooperLooper Live Looping Sampler: essej.net/sooperlooper/
• List of applications using JACK: jackaudio.org/applications/
• The Real-Time Linux WIKI: rt.wiki.kernel.org

• 21.06. FÊTE DE LA MUSIQUE Greifswald
• 25.06. LOCALIZE – DAS HEIMATFESTIVAL Potsdam
• 30.06. FUSION FESTIVAL Lärz
• 09.07. ORWOHAUS FESTIVAL Berlin
• 29.07. BREEZA FESTIVAL Altdöbern
• 30.07. SUN FLOWER FESTIVAL Freiberg
• 13.08. ODERBRUCH OPEN AIR Fort Gorgast
• 10.09. LIEDERLAUSCHEN 4 Berlin
• 14.10. NÜRNBERG.POP Nürnberg
• 22.10. KULTURNACHT Stuttgart

Make sure to check the stage and time if you’re on location and don’t want to miss that weird guy driving a spaceship while playing drums. Some more shows around Munich will follow in October, I appreciate everyone’s help!

While it will take a larger number of posts to get around the whole system, I want to give you an overview over the MIDI signal flow in my setup. The heart is definately the Nord Modular G2, where almost all the sounds and all the sequences come from. The drum triggers basically just control a modular synthesizer patch in the G2 that is  representing the composition, or the song.

MIDI Signal Flow

Let’s go through the components bottom-up:

• Drum Triggers are the common Roland triggers clamped on snare bassdrum. They are connected to the trigger pad and produce signals for each drum hit that can be later used in the G2.
• Foot Switches control song structures. I use one for a next command in some songs and one for record/dub in the Loopdeck.
• Trigger Pad is an Alesis Control Pad with 8 pads plus trigger and footswitch inputs. The are some other manufacturers of similar pads, but I don’t need all the audio and sample functionality. This one just generates MIDI signals that go into the MIDI Router.
• MIDI Router is a self-built device with 5 MIDI in- and 5 outputs. It is again based on the MBHP using a PIC18F452 Microcontroller. I can route and manipulate (split, merge, filter, …) MIDI signals with it. All MIDI signals in my setup are connected, so they can share one common MIDI clock and can sync and control each other. The routing is hardcoded in the firmware, which is mainly written in C.
• Nord Modular G2 here all the magic happens. The MIDI signals from the drum triggers can control basically everything: song structures, bassnotes, samples, step-sequencers, on/off-switches. The G2 is also able to send out MIDI to other devices, such as the Nord Rack 2 and a software soundfont player. I’ll talk more about that in the future and will give some examples.
• Embedded Linux Unit. Again, this is a whole chapter on its own and to be discussed in the future. Basically, the Loopdeck is a self-designed software based loop sampler, the Soundfont player is used to generate piano and e-piano sounds.

This seems to be a really complex system, but it is very flexible and once I was getting used to it, I was able to perform pretty intuitively with the equipment. Of course, this setup changes and evolves from day to day, and it has been much simpler and smaller in the past.

• Wikipedia article on MIDI
• The MIDIBox Hardware Platform: ucApps.de

MIDIbox64

This is basically a MIDI controller with a lot of different knobs, buttons, LEDs and foot switches. You can “hear” (of course it just controls some synths and filters in the computer)  it in action on the track fr–05 on my first album mad scientist drummer.

• MIDIBox Hardware Plattform and MIOS Operating System: ucApps.de
• MIDIBox Blog: midibox.org