feedback

[egw]

If you have any comments about electro-music 2007, please post them here. We are always looking for suggestions about how to make things better.
(Yes, we know about the lack of air conditioning in the gallery, and hope to do something about that next time!)
If you post something nice and/or eloquent, we'll use it in next year's web site and press releases.

[Mohoyoho]

At EM05 and EM06 I came back inspired. EM07 was no different. I saw several performers who inspired me to approach my music differently.

I thought the video projections were wonderful and went well with much of the music I saw. Eric's Buchla and Putney were a delight to see and touch. Terry's incredible modular system was quite impressive, and I was honored that he asked me to jam on it. Jonathan Block was a delight, and his Akai synth was a marvel. It was great that he brought along his daughter, Kali. In fact, I thought it was wonderful to see many young people at EM07.

The publicity must have really worked, because I don't remember seeing that many attendees in the past. A tip of the hat to Kip Rosser for that.

I also enjoyed the surround sound in the large gallery. I believe Dean had his hand in that.

Another tip of the hat to Bill who worked the sound in the theater. And I would like to once again thank the fellow who replaced the broken sub for Michael's and my performance Saturday night. I thought the sound in both the theater and the large gallery were superior to previous years. Those subs must have made the difference.

As usual Howard, Greg, Julie, Hong, Genevieve, and all the volunteers really made this a great event. They were all so warm, friendly, and giving. It always starts at the top, and these folks really made it work for three years in a row. Their personalities, dedication, and hard work were reflected in a tremendous electro-music '07 event.

[Agnes]

Thanks for a wonderful three days of awesome experiences! It was great to see old friends and to make new ones. Some of the presentations will remain with me for ever. I've been listening to CD's I got there all day long. Amazing.

Thank you for giving such a warm reception to my presentation "Into the Mirror and Out Of the Synthesizer". It was my way of saying thank you electro-music 2005, 2006 and 2007, and keep it going.

Thank you to Howard, Greg, Julie, Hong, Dino and all the wonderful staff. And thank you to all the wonderful people. I especially want to thank anyone who gave up a seat for me and my walker, or helped me in any way. Your kindnesses, made it possible for me to be there.

Agnes

P.S. If you think you've read this before, it's because I posted it in another place on the forum earlier, but I think it should go here.

[vostek]

Good times.
I'm enjoying this persistent collective hallucination that is electro-music. Lets tip our hats to all those involved. The production was one-upped on all fronts compared to last year. Now, lets get back to the dojo because it's not going to be easy to top ourselves for next year!

As far as constructive criticism, I don't have much. As mentioned, the gallery did get quite steamy. Also, the Composer Symposium should be more open to audience participation next time instead of concentrating on the perspectives of just the 4 guys at the front (there was only time for 2 comments from the audience).
Just a thought, a pipe dream if you will, but how about going to the next level and having live video streaming of the event next year? There are an increasing number of low-cost solutions coming around, and it seems like the visual aspect is increasingly integral to the overall Electro experience.
Lastly, I know a lot of participants are not rolling in cash, so if we could try to tighten up the budget to bring down the ticket cost next year (or at least keep the price stable), I'm sure a lot of participants would appreciate that.

Cliff Winton
www.vstk.org

[pyxl8r]

Just want to add a quick THANK YOU to Greg and Howard for an amazing 3-day experience. It was great to see old friends and meet some new ones. I went home tired but inspired to expand my musical horizons and try new things (esp. ChucK!).

Thanks to everyone also for the warm response to our Brainstatik set... we never really are sure what the reaction will be when we perform, so the positive vibes we got back were truly appreciated. Maybe we're all just musical misfits, but it's nice to have such a talented group of peers say "hey, that was a COOL set!"

There was so much support and encouragement among ALL the musicians, and that sense of togetherness really came through this year. Many times I saw people just diving right in to help with a technical glitch, to squash an elusive audio or video gremlin, or just to help lug gear back to someone's car. You can't force that to happen, but it DID happen, and that was -- for me -- the secret of the ever-growing magic and success of this event.

On a technical note, I have a solution to the less-than-ideal acoustics in the gallery: I have six 6'x6' acoustic blankets that have helped tame the reverb in other performance spaces very successfully when hung on the back wall. I know some bands had some problems in that TOO live space, so as we get closer to next year's event, I'll be happy to volunteer to set them up so we can all hear a more balanced sound in there.

On a similar note... man, those Mackies really shined!!! I think they ought to throw some gear your way next year, since that was the ONLY brand used to bring our music out loud and clear. "EM-08. Sponsored by Mackie"? Hmmm...

Anyway, I hope everyone got through the rain and back to your close-by or far-flung homes safely! Again, WOW, and thanks!! CU next year!!!

-Ken

www.brainstatik.com

[egw]

Video streaming would be really cool. I don't know what technology might be required for that. If anyone has some expertise in that area, please get in touch with Howard and Me.

[RFBB]

I too had a wonderful time at EM07. It's always great to see old friends and catch up (some whom I may have never met had it NOT been for this festival) as well as, to see/hear how they have evolved in just 12 months.

Sponsorship may very well be the key to lowering the overall cost of this three day event. I can see how getting Mackie involved would eliminate PA rental etc. and perhaps one of these video streaming companys could pitch in and demo their software and server capacity?

But overall, I'm impressed on how the event keeps getting better and better. Howard and Greg are still "babes in the wilderness" but they pull it off gracefully.

And lastly, the volunteers. Without your/our help... this really couldn't happen, at least not by any means as successfully. I saw numerous people lending hands, sweating their asses off making sure that every angle was running smoothe. That's a great feeling to know that I'm apart of something this special and to know that it's community understands and shares the electro-music spirit or "persistent collective hallucination" as Cliff likes to call it.

[synthblock]

It's too bad it only comes once a year. We had a wonderful time. Special kudos to Howard, Greg and the rest of the volunteers; help was never far away when needed. It's great to hear so many different types of music in a short time period.

Already counting down the days to EM08!

[LoopsWithMSP]

Hi,

I know I'm new to the list and have an approach and perspective that is different than a lot of you, so please don't take this all that seriously. But I do think it's important (tho I'm not sure why) that the Looper's Delight folks have a greater awareness of this list, and perhaps vice-versa. So I've made a totally subjective report to that list. I'll paste it in here in case anyone is interested.

Because I apparently enjoy being a sh*t-disturber, I've included my (only) criticism of the festival, which for me was the ubiquity of the video backdrops. There are more details at the end of the post. Thanks in advance for your tolerance of these observations, which I (perhaps mistakenly) presume will be taken to be politically incorrect.

I just came back from electro-music 2007 in the northern Philadelphia suburb of Cheltenham. It was a great deal of fun, and there was a lot of live looping involved in many of the sets, although mine was the only set *built* around it. Kevin Kissinger, used a fair amount of it in his virtuosic Theremin set, and the several other guitarists (most notably Kurt Michaels from Chicago, who played very expressively, and Mike Hunter from the improvisational sextet - as I recall - Brainstatik) used what I assume was unsynced looping to good effect. I'm sure there was a lot of other looping going on in groups.

And, of course, lots of people were playing canned loops. But aside from that...

The group Spinning Plates used a common sync track and a click in their ears for tightness, so they did pick a tempo/tempos before playing, but still used looping quite spontaneously to excellent effect. In fact, they were pretty much my favorite act of the weekend, mixing electronic techniques with some virtuosic skills on drums, electronic wind, and guitar (as well as having a video artist as a member of the group, which produced, to my mind, notably better-integrated imagery than any other group had).

There was a lot of noize (is that the current hip spelling?), some of it looped, no doubt. I learned the difference between "dark ambient noize" and "power noise", and I believe there's an "extreme noise" too. As long as it's not damaging my ears, I can get into it. I learned the term "noizician" from Spike, aka Astrogenic Hallucinauting, whose set I really enjoyed.

The facility and lineup were excellent. The age spread was vast, but the gender divide was, if possible, even more pronounced than Y2K6. It was noon-midnight over 3 days, with half-hour (for solo artists) or 3/4-hour (some groups) slots going almost constantly, as well as a jam room upstairs and a demo room, both going round-the-clock. Constant activity, lotsa good talk, lotsa new friends.

I had trouble with the constant neo-psychedelic video backdrops. They were cool (and even stunning) in and of themselves, but by the third day I was really sick of them (I think there were two or three video artists doing the whole festival, so the visuals did not seem as diverse as the music), and in fact found them to detract seriously from the music. I had to close my eyes through a number of sets. I was the only artist to refuse a video backdrop, and I was glad I did. I think for those whose approach is less performance-oriented than mine, the videos were OK, but IMHO the other artists would be well-advised to think more carefully about the way they allow themselves to be presented.

Anyway, that and the lack of air conditioning in a couple of the spaces were my only criticisms of an otherwise great festival. Loopers should consider this one as a viable venue, I believe.

Warren

[egw]

Thanks for your input, Warren. It's up to the artists whether they want visuals for their performance. Most of them do, but I agree they should think about whether it adds something. Actually there were at least six musical performances without visuals, and a couple with very minimal video. Four artists provided their own visuals, and a few others had worked closely with the video artist to get something synergetic. In total there were ten different video artists represented. It's certainly true that in some cases the video wasn't a great fit for the music. But for me this is part of the fun at an experimentally oriented festival, putting things together that wouldn't ordinarily go together, just to see what happens. Sometimes you get wonderful accidents. I think that some of the "sameness" we see with the visuals has to do with the somewhat limited palette of techniques, based on software currently available. Video art is still in it's infancy, relative to electronic music. Still, I think there was a fair amount of diversity.

[egw]

[LoopsWithMSP]

Thanks, Greg, for the corrections. I guess the artists without video, through strange coincidence, all performed while I was otherwise engaged (except for Ms. Bechtold, who eschewed video for all but one piece, which fact slipped my mind while I was writing - surprisingly, too, since I enjoyed that performance a great deal).

My observation of male/female ratio was not meant in any way to be a crit of e-m - it's just a fact that strikes me as a little disappointing but not surprising, given the (somewhat less dramatic but still large, I believe) gender gap in the technical professions in general (at least in programming). Maybe the genders tend to skew differently in terms of taste, and that's all there is to it, but in any rate I thought it was worth noting.

Warren

[bbinkovitz]

whether visuals enhance or detract from a performance is highly subjective and dependent on the level of stimulation each viewer prefers. i thought vostek's visuals for vytear were totally hot, and tim thompson's stuff was amazing visual poetry, especially the video he provided for margaret noble. personally, i really enjoyed doing visuals with steve (as project ruori) for numerous sets, too.

many of the musicians at electro have commented in one way or another that music is their tune-out tool that brings them to a separate world away from all their worries and frustrations. for me video mixing is like that too and the members of ruori put a ton of thought and effort into every step of the video performance, from shooting footage year round to build up an archive, to spending hours making and labeling clips with final cut pro, to writing custom software for realtime mixing, to the actual performance during which we are constantly gauging the music to try to select the most fitting clips, it's really an art to us. i suspect this is the case for the other video artists too.

our goal is never to compete with the music for attention. just the opposite, we work to provide visuals that draw attention to it. even frank loyd wrights have landscaping around them, and even the best music stands to gain from a good, appropriate, artistic visual element.

[LoopsWithMSP]

[synthblock]

I thought the video this year was exceptional and more in sync with the music than last year. I think it really helped when the video performer had experience with the musician and knew the musical style. Cliff's set with Vytear and some of Dr. T's work in particular had very much evolved. Of course I'm biased, but I thought Greg's video work over my music, which was completely live looping, was very appropriate. I wished I had turned around more to look at it!

[egw]

Unfortunately the lighting system in the theater is barely functional. So we couldn't do the spotlighting, colors, etc. that we would have liked. All we could do was wash the entire stage. With better lighting we could put less emphasis on the video.

Certainly your comments are welcome Warren. You are not the first one to suggest this (see the discussion from last year). So there is a wide range of opinions, which is good. That is how we learn and improve. In the end I think we will continue to let the artists decide about the visuals, but it's good for them to be aware that not everyone in the audience prefers that.

I consider this to be an experimental electronic music and art festival.(Not surprising since I'm a visual artist) I'm not sure if Howard agrees about that, but I think he does. In the past we had less art, but it is increasing every year (including some very cool installations). Also all of the art that was hanging on the walls was done by one of the participants - Steve Buzash. Personally I'm very excited about the trend towards more musicians also doing video art and collaborating with visual artists.

By the way (and I know this is not really a valid reason for doing more visuals) - looking at the photographs of the event, the performances where the video is projected onto and around the musicians look absolutely stunning. You'll be able to see this when we post them.

[bbinkovitz]

[LoopsWithMSP]

I appreciate these responsive, thoughtful, non-flaming replies.

[Kurt Michaels]

[Gregory J. Golda]

To begin- WOW! What a great time. I learned so much and was just so excited to see so many different things happening here. Thanks to everyone that had so many nice things to say about my group Spinning Plates. And I have to say that seeing Bradford Reed play the Pencillina up close in what was practically a private show was just fantastic.

In response to:

"I think the problem ("my" problem, if you prefer) was exacerbated by the size of the screen and the total darkness of at least the theater. Back in the old Fillmore East, when the Jefferson Airplane or the Who were playing, not only were there still spotlighted, and the video projections were considerably above them, not actually on their bodies, for goodness sake. Here, it was just impossible to watch the performers and ignore the video projections, if that was your bent. I think that's too intrusive. I know I'm in the minority."

As a visual designer, and part of SPINNING PLATES I think the inclusion of video in someone's set should not be a "oh, that would be cool" decision. It would be the equivalent of my work being accompanied by dropping a needle on a record or just turning on the radio. (all methods that have their place mind you) but I think the use of video needs to be a respected and studied art form. I've been playing with Spinning Plates for almost a year and meticulously building my original content so I can improvise with it. I can't imagine anyone's music will be respected or enhanced by randomly joining visualizations with it. That's the kind of experiment that can and should happen upstairs in the attic (where the AC is!) in the open jams but not on a performance stage.

I did enjoy the double screen work during Electric Diamond of Project Ruori. Original and very much in tune with the music.

As mentioned briefly in the previous posts, an artist on stage without lighting is unacceptable. Aside from the AC issue (top priority!) ligthing in each space should have at least some control. If it wasn't for video many of those performing in these spaces would be completely in the dark.

I'm not putting the responsibility solely on electro either. I have a pricey DMX lighting rig that takes about an hour to set up, therefore I didn't bring it. I brought a Chauvet Stage 4 lighting board that you plug your lights into directly and use as a dimmer. For $70 this little light board is magic. It's beat sensitive and completely controllable. I used 4 $10 work lights and extension cords and we were one of the only acts with lighting.
So for all of the artists that spent so much time putting your rig together and perfecting your sound etc. Open up that wallet and spend $150 on a small light kit and throw your audience a treat.

[Kurt Michaels]

[egw]

The lighting suggestions are very good - we will try to do more with this next year, even if we can't get the Art Center to upgrade their theater system. I hope that we can get a volunteer or two to step up to running the lights.

[rbedgar]

Last year I was able to fly across coasts to be at EM-06, and enjoyed it very much. This year I listened as time permitted to the streaming audio.

The audio sounded clear and unmuddied--not theatre-presence quality, but it was wonderful to hear it, and I appreciate all your efforts to provide it. There was a good variety in what I heard across the three days, and like last year, it was a course in EM.

For suggestions for the online experience: It would be great to see a list of equipment and players while listening to the performance. And while a video of someone twirling knobs might be bandwidth hogging, a still image grabbed within the first minute and immediately published on E-M.C would be great to have. This would be a lot to ask of someone(s), but it would be great for us at a distance.

If you want info on video streaming, the bassist I play with, Roger Winkleman, is happy to help out. Roger is a streaming video specialist for the Stanford University school of Medicine, so he knows what he's talking about, and he's a nice guy who would be happy to share what he knows. You can email him directly at rogerw@stanford.edu .

I respect Mosc's position on bandwidth, and am not pushing for a video streaming solution. But Roger could help with real-world numbers and suggestions, if you're interested.

Thanks again to all who provided the wonderful experience last weekend. For those I chatted with online during the performances--and who live near the SF bay area in California--I'd love to chat with ya out here and compare notes. Drop me a line if ya like.

Robert

[mosc]

Hi, Everybody. I took a day off after the event. Didn't even hook up my computer. I'm still spaced out.

Thanks to everyone for such a great experience. The music continues to improve every year. I hear people's music being influenced by others in the community. I'm convinced that these festivals are making everyone's music better.

BTW, for the most part, I'm sorta in Warren's camp on the videos. I'm not particularly concerned about it because it is pretty easy to close one's eyes if the music and video art don't seem to be complementing each other. I often listen with eyes closed even when there is no video. Still, some of video/music combinations were superb - the video actually enhanced the experience. There were several cases, but Tim Thompson's video during Lynn Bechtold's perfromance was like another musical part. It was something spectacular, IMHO.

Thanks everyone for the excellent feedback.

I was talking to many people and I think it might be a good idea to leave the final set of each evening TBD (To Be Determined). There were several instances where we had newly formed musical groups perform in slots where for one reason or another people didn't show up. These were considered by some to be the among the best music.

Juli and Genevieve has all kinds of ideas for improving the food and logistics. We'll be sharing that with everyone in due course. I've personally got a huge job of trying to sort through 36 hours of recordings. Indeed, a labor of love, but I too was inspired by the music and want to do some composing.

In the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy the after glow of the experience. It's great to meet with old friends and make so many wonderful new ones.

Again, special thanks to Greg, Hong, Juli, Genevieve, Kip, Bill, Kevin, Michael, Deknow, the staff at the Cheltenham Art Center, and Robin for making that beautiful quilt for the raffle.

[bbinkovitz]