I was very fortunate and dare I say honoured to give a talk at the John Cage “Everyday is a good day” exhibition at the Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. I admittedly was nervous Cage’s influence on me as a musician was extremely important in my formative years and it was a little shaky at the start when discussing his ideas about chance and silence. During the talk I discussed how through Cage’s work I learned to stop and listen to the sounds around me and got in to chip tune music, how I expanded those concepts and included them in “Obsolete?” and “Observations” by way of visual and sonic chance. And finally how I created a piece of software called “SONUS (One)” (out soon) to illustrate a spatial realisation of chance music on the Apple iPhone and Android phone. It was good fun and good questions from the audience, I do really like Cambridge hopefully I will be there a lot more soon.
As some of you may have noticed the Software page from my blog has been removed. The Music Tech Software of the past will no longer be distributed from these pages. I have recently had the good fortune to do a project called the “Super Chip Tune Samba Band” which encourages large groups of people to come together to create and perform music. The project has attracted a lot of attention from both big companies to the people who the software is intended for, and for this I am grateful. It has also changed my focus from primarily instrument maker to more educational related software.
It has also now made me change the way I do things, no longer will I reverse engineer / hack computers to learn about them, it’s all gone, all of it, destroyed (much to my friends and colleagues despair). From now on it will be official development only. Developing for several hand held platforms with the intention to create small but useful music related software. With iPhone and Android development already underway, and with the intention of developing for DSiware, PSP Go and Symbian in the future. I feel going the legitimate and official route will allow those who are unaware of the music making on these devices more aware of their potential, and by “their” I wholeheartedly mean the individuals.
This is by no means an attempt to legitimise chip tune music, it is something I feel I need to do as an individual. I love chip tune music, I have always striven to push it as far as I can take it, from making software for all to projects like Obsolete? and this is where it has lead me.
I had a wonderful time at the Vintage Computer Festival, the National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, so many computers so many exhibits. I instantly fell in love with the a Vextrec computer once I saw and heard it in action. I got to see some of the collections from other museums like the Centre for Computing History who have some immaculate and rare computers and even Jim Austin’s Altair 8800 from his collection.
I was very fortunate to meet and chat with most of the speakers Chris Serle (The Computer Show) , Sophie Wilson (ARM processor and Acorn Computers) , Dylan Smith (the Tweeting spectrum) I even asked some questions during the Q&A’s for both Sophie Wilson and O.M.D. who gave an amazing Q&A and performance of some new songs and classics. The volunteers at the museum also took to giving presentations at the museum Peter Onion on the Elliott 803, Tony Frazer on the Witch, Delwyn Holyroyd on mainframes of the 1970s, Tony Sale on Colossus and our youngest volunteer Adam Bradley on the Cray series computers which the crowd loved.
I also gave two performances in the mansion which were good fun because of the small audience size, people could ask questions during, for the chip tune performance I even took them through the code for the visuals. The second show on Sunday was was a re-showing of Obsolete? and a Q&A which I am beginning to like doing more and more. For the rest of the time I was directing people round the museum and talking to exhibitors.
All in all it was a great weekend and good fun was had by all, I even picked up a second BBC Micro.
You can hear BBC’s Broadcasting House’s report on it here around 54 minutes in to the programs, also report on the event at the BBC Technology website here.
Really enjoyed doing this interview, they were a great team and I love the way they introduced the pieces with loads of historical research and references to other music.
The interview explains how and why I made the leap from Obsolete? to Observations. You can listen and download through iTunes here or direct from their web-page here.
You can find out more about Observations here. Observations takes place on March 12th & 13th, 2010 at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University at 7:30pm and it’s free!!!
To celebrate the impending release of “Observations” I have decided to release the full film of “Obsolete?” for you to enjoy. Note : “Function” is meant to be just a black screen, because it is scary.
Yes it’s bit of an old clip but you can watch it most places in the world now that it is part of the BBC Learning Zone archive here. The clip is about the making of “Obsolete?” the large scale computer music work that was commissioned by the National Museum of Computing and funded by the PRS Foundation.
The second installment on this video can be seen here but sadly only in the UK.
It is also nice that teachers (like the one who told me about the clip) are using it as a resource to show contemporary electronic music in schools.
I was very fortunate to give a presentation of the work I did on Obsolete? at the National Museum of Computing, at the Open University in Milton Keynes Ecologies of Modern Heritage Forum. It was an extremely interesting day to see the vast array of different projects being done at Bletchley Park as a whole. Themes such as History/Memory, Systems, Transmitting, Decay and Dr. Z Zhadrals excellent CIPHER project from archaeological digs to interaction with modern and old technology. It was really good to see so many people who were passionate about doing projects that both highlight the amazing things at Bletchley Park and how much the site needs further help. Overall it was a very good day, lots of interesting people and I am certain lots of interesting projects to come.
Tune in to hear me interviewed by Digital Planet in a special looking at Obsolete?, The National Museum of Computing and the rise of the personal computer. You can download the new version of the theme tune for free here and you can listen again here. There is also a downloadable podcast here.
The Open University and Digital Planet, BBC World Service’s Weekly Technology programme, have joined forces to produce six special co-produced editions of the programme. Hosted by Gareth Mitchell, Digital Planet brings the clearest, sharpest guide to developments in our connected world to a worldwide audience via radio, digital and online.
For more information, listen online and listen again visit the Digital Planet BBC site here. Image reproduced with permission see footer.
Pixelh8′s most recent work “Obsolete?” is a audio and visual study of the people, machines, history of The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park and looks closely at the themes of mathematics, logic, code-breaking and enciphering. The project was funded by the PRS Foundations new music award and commissioned by The National Museum of Computing.
The music itself is composed using some of the oldest and rarest computers in the world such as the WWII code-breaking machine Colossus Mark 2 Rebuild, and the 1960′s Elliott 803 largely used for mathematics and some of the more commonplace machines such as the BBC Micro. With over thirty machines studied and utilised within the music, it is a combination of both sounds from the internal sound chips and the external electro-mechanical sounds. In addition to this, the piece also utilises such items as the early non-electrical mechanical adding machines.
The project was comprised of twelves pieces of music and accompanying visuals and culminated in two performances at the prestigious Bletchley Park Mansion on March 20th and 21st, 2009.
Ok lots of stuff to choose from, first up BBC Radio 3 The Late Junction with Verity Sharp from the BBC website here, a very eclectic radio show. BBC Word Service The Strand interview with Dan Damon and article on chiptune music here, and finally last but not least BBC Radio Wales an interview with Adam Walton regarding music and technology here from Sunday 26th for a week. Enjoy!
Internationally renowned chip tune musician, teacher, designer and published author Pixelh8 / Matthew C. Applegate makes his music from reprogramming some of the oldest and rarest vintage computer systems in the world.
Parallel to his involvement in music performance, Pixelh8 encourages creative computing in schools and workshops across the United Kingdom and is a PhD research Degree student researching "Educational Music Technology".
I was very fortunate and dare I say honoured to give a talk at the John Cage “Everyday is a good day” exhibition at the Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. I admittedly was nervous Cage’s influence on me as a musician was extremely important in my formative years and it was a little shaky at the start when discussing his ideas about chance and silence. During the talk I discussed how through Cage’s work I learned to stop and listen to the sounds around me and got in to chip tune music, how I expanded those concepts and included them in “Obsolete?” and “Observations” by way of visual and sonic chance. And finally how I created a piece of software called “SONUS (One)” (out soon) to illustrate a spatial realisation of chance music on the Apple iPhone and Android phone. It was good fun and good questions from the audience, I do really like Cambridge hopefully I will be there a lot more soon.
