I have been interested in VSTs and other synthesized sound tools since I started using Ableton Live about 6 years ago. They have helped bring a richness to my songs. The very best VSTs use processes like “acoustic modelling,” and  are expressive and complex, mimicking Rhodes electric pianos, Hammond Organs, string sections, guitars, brass, woodwinds, and in the case of Applied Acoustic Systems from Montreal, a wide variety of highly unusual and exotic sounds. I am a huge fan of a few of their tools. When I bought a Korg Micro-kontrol I got two lite versions of their software: Lounge Lizard and Ultra Analog. These two sound banks really helped me get some thick and authentic musical tones into my music. Recently AAS released some great new sound banks, and even a freebie sampler so you can try out a bunch of sounds for free! All you have to do is download Swatches and run it as a VST inside your software. There are 48 sounds to try and I guarantee they will blow your mind.

http://www.applied-acoustics.com/swatches/overview/

I was surfing the web and came across this interesting and innovative project called “Beyond Digital: Morocco.” It turns out the guys who are traveling to Morocco have a really high concept purpose behind their trip, planned for June 2011, and they are fundraising using a novel online tool called “Kickstarter.” I don’t think I can do their amazing concept justice, so I’ll copy their mission statement here and encourage you to check out their promo video on the Kickstarter page. I am sponsoring them for 10 bucks and really hope it all works out – good luck guys!

Beyond Digital: Morocco is a research and production project consisting of video documentation, digital media workshops, and public performances managed by artists DJ Rupture (Jace Clayton), Maga Bo, Photo Editor of The Fader magazine John Francis Peters, and Taliesin Gilkes-Bower on location for the month of June in Marrakesh, Morocco. The project focuses on how creative adaptations of global digital technologies in Morocco are helping to transform youth culture and suggesting powerful alternatives to Western concepts of digital literacy.

For more information about Beyond Digital: Morocco check out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1683451334/beyond-digital-morocco-what-if-the-dj-were-the-ngo?ref=users

One of the coolest annual festivals to hit our city is the Manifesto Festival. Hip-hop is the touchstone that unites many of the hundreds of artists and performers who participate. As I post we are in right in the middle of it! It takes places over 7 days from Sep 20-26 and there are a few more days to check it out.

Today’s Highlight – Day 4 – Thursday, Sep. 24 –  Made You Look Art Exhibition – Performance tonight by Sarah Linhares and DJ Moonstarr and more at 99 Sudbury St. Show runs until Saturday October 2 at Airship 37 Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District.

“Main Event” – Sunday, Sep. 26 - Concert at Yonge-Dundas Square in the heart of Toronto features members of The Roots (J. Period and Black Thought), Jay Electronica, plus an unbelievable showcase of the best of Canadian/Torontonian hip-hop and urban music talent (Saukrates, D-sisive, Eternia, Masia One and many more!).

More info:

http://themanifesto.ca

I have been using Ableton Live since I got version 4 about six years ago on a little shopping spree at Toronto’s Long and McQuade. It’s fantastic software. It allows for incredible flexibility, whether in recording or playing midi, or in live performance.

I just got an email promoting a unique contest, targeted toward youthful music makers. Ableton is sponsoring a song contest for young people in two age categories: under 15 and 15-18. All you teenage electronic music creators should upload your track to Soundcloud pronto! The deadline is end of August so you’ve got a couple months to polish up those rough gems.

For more information:

http://www.abletonsummermusicchallenge.com/

Click “Create a track” to see the link to free “Ableton Live Intro” software and a massive 375 MB Zip folder of sounds from co-sponsors Loopmasters.

Oi! Tudo bem?

It’s been a long time since I said/wrote that, but I think it’s time for me to publish/release “Mikooshka’s Best of Brazilian Music” collection via a podcast.

It could be more a of a “mixtape” flavor as I intend to include all kinds of classics, and make it a selector or collectors version. I will be culling some amazing alternate versions of well-known tunes, and ranging from bossa nova, samba and MPB, to rock/reggae and of course my favourite, D+B.  I visited a DJ named Sergio Elmir at Dos Mundos CIUT in Toronto and played a two-song mix that brought together Jorge Ben Jor and DJ Marky/Fernada Porto – so look for more genre-benders along those lines.

Do you have some favorite Brazilian classic to recommend? I’m looking for music in all eras and genres, since that essentially is what Brazil is to me – a mega blend of every style grooving along with each other and getting on famously.

I will prepare a properly teched-out iTunes version (chapters, cues, images, etc) and also want to upload to Mixcloud which hosts amazing mixes from the likes of Chris Coco and Zero 7, among others.

Really looking forward to building the playlist! Hit me with your comments!

Obrigado,
Mikooshka

RiP: Remix Manifesto is a really cool project by a filmmaker named Brett Gaylor.  It looks at issues of intellectual property in the age of rampant piracy and a digital culture obsessed with notions like remixing and mashups. Brett talks with musical icons from the present/past (Girl Talk and Gilberto Gil).

Watch a 6 minute trailer at the NFB website.

Description from the National Film Board:

The feature documentary RiP: Remix Manifesto explores intellectual property in the era of file sharing and mash-ups, and challenges the thresholds of “fair use.”

In RiP: A Remix Manifesto, web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder, Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A Remix Manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Which side of the ideas war are you on? Find out after watching RIP!

Support open culture! Proceeds from this film help contribute to the Open Source Cinema Project (http://opensourcecinema.org/)

Radio Coco–Featuring Ulysses Castellanos by mikooshka

It would seem I can’t resist trying out some new kind of collaborative / social networking music sites and one that I joined a year ago but haven’t used much is Sound Cloud.  SC has a very simple tagline: “We Move Music”. Some of the cool features they have include: sharing files, a cool visual display of the music file, with timing-based commenting, and embeddable music players and “drop boxes” on your site (so people can share music with you).

My first adventure with music players was the “Premium Beat” player I use on http://mikooshka.com. I chose a multi-track jukebox version which has served me well. After migrating a few sites to the WordPress platform I found a widget called “Apture” which I really like for it’s subtle integration (though it can’t be called a “player”).

In their latest newsletter Sound Cloud mention embedding in WordPress pages and I thought that was a pretty cool idea. I uploaded my file and coped the embed code. It didn’t work for me though! I then tried the regular embed code and it worked. So, here is the newest version of “Radio Coco” which is my Spanish Latin house version of “Coconut Radio.” Remember, you should consider remixing “Coconut Radio” so I hope a few readers will download the files and share their finished mix, via Sound Cloud of course, when they’re done. Enjoy…

Around the world, culture and traditional life is under attack from the forces of progress and commerce. The Kalahari Bushmen and their struggle are documented in the book Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought by James G. Workman. In the book, the Botswana diamond mining industry is criticized for its role in the sabotage of Bushmen water resources. Michael Campana, an American University professor writes a lengthy review and critique:

http://aquadoc.typepad.com/waterwired/2009/09/heart-of-dryness.html

In the 1980s the bushmen were brought to international fame through the movie comedy “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” To our amusement, a Coke bottle (tossed from a plane) drops from the sky and into their midst, and turns life for the locals upside-down. An intrepid bushman named Xi, played by N!xau, decides to deliver the bottle to the ends of the earth.

And here we are three decades later. I hope that people find my video for “Coconut Radio,” which uses extensive footage from the colonialism-themed 1930s classic “Wild Men of the Kalahari”will be entertaining but will provoke some thought and reflection as well. It would be easy to forget that the men, women and children of the film were real people and that their descendents live on today and are fighting for survival, cultural preservation and land – much like indigenous First Nations in places like Canada.

Watch my video at the main page of this website or check out the HD version on YouTube.

The final version of the HD video was uploaded to YouTube last night. It was a big file: 250 mbs. I feel asleep with the computer whirring and the little blue light of the USB wireless adapter flickering away under the desk. It took about 2-3 hours to upload on our “light” high-speed connection.

The video looks really good. I made a few edits from the previous version and it looks better. It’s great to have an HD video at 720p on YouTube! This is the wave of the future – no more lo-res videos! You need a fast connection or more time to build a stream, but watching HD videos is spectacular. I have a number of YouTube favourites in HD including the snowboard video called “Teenage Love Graffiti” (it looks incredible – look it up!).

For the final render from Sony Vegas I chose the AVI file with Xvid encoding – hopefully when I post that it will work for people who choose to download (for the Radio Coco Remix Project). I noticed that videos appear to be ready for play right away at YouTube – you used to be greeted with a message that warned it could take a number of hours for “processing.”

Next step: uploading the mini-doc “Making Coconut Radio.”