leafcutterjohn.com

Some more light controlled music….

An attempt to play something a bit more musical on the light controlled audio system I’m currently working on.

Work in progress for Sundays show at the Royal Festival Hall

Something I’m working on at the moment. It’s early days but I think it could turn into something really nice. Light falling on 4 sensors controls all the sound in this clip. Lights controlled by an Arduino which also sends the light sensor data back to Max/MSP which deals with the audio generation. Camera not so great as it was dark and I was filming and playing at the same time.

Concerts this weekend!

I hope you are all well and happy, January is turning out to be the most busy of all time so forgive my slightly late notice for these concerts this weekend.

First up: I’ve been working with 5 extraordinary musicians from the BBC Symphony Orchestra on a piece to be performed after the Jonathan Harvey Concert at the Barbican this Saturday the 28th Jan.

The piece uses lot’s of live sampling and manipulation of the instruments, you can see us rehearsing in MV2 at Maida Vale (above). There will also be pieces written by Guildhall School students and after, a live set by yours truly. Full details of the days events are given HERE

My piece and all the students pieces will be performed from 10pm in the Barbican Foyer (down stairs) and it’s FREE ADMISSION. If you would like to go and see the Jonathan Harvey concert at 8pm I’ve organised a discount, all you have to do is quote ‘LEAFCUTTER’ when booking by phone (020 7638 8891) or in person at the Barbican Booking office and you’ll get a ticket for £5 (+ booking fee if using phone).

The second concert is the day after wards and is at the Southbank Sunday 29th January. It features a new device I have made which makes music from light, or more precisely uses changing light to control sounds… Blah every way I can think of describing it falls short. Anyhow it looks a bit like this, but very animated and pulsing like a swarm of happy fire flies.

The show starts at 7:45, I’ll be playing solo and a duet with Olly Coates on cello. The night promises to be very special, Olly has put a lot of thought into the staging and scheduling! The night also features singer Olivia Chaney accompanied by Jordan Hunt, poetry by Matthew Welton and a new unaccompanied cello work by Christopher Mayo.

Tickets £5, for more info and booking click THIS FELLA

Ok that’s all for now, oh hold on, not it’s not! I made a little singy song thing about autumn which I don’t think I shared with you last time – it’s here for your digestion.

Take care and hope to see you at the weekend.

J x.

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Loop Collective Club Night: Leafcutter John, MA, Rory Simmons, Jeane Added. Blackheath Halls Fri Nov 18th.

Friday, November 18 · 8:00pm – 12:30pm Blackheath Halls £10

UK Electronic artist Leafcutter John joins an eclectic mix of international artists including French vocalist/bassist Jeanne Added, Norwegian percussion wizard Terje Evensen in a duo with trumpeter Rory Simmons and Loop Collective group MA. Expect a charged night of electronics, jazz and visuals, set in the the splendour of Blackheath Halls, culminating in a DJ set from Nostalgia 77′s Ben Lamdin.

Tickets: http://www.londonjazzfestival.org.uk/events/2011-11-18/loop-collective-club-night

Leafcutter John

MA:
Tom Challenger (sax/synths)
Matt Calvert (electronics/synths)
Dave Smith (drums)
Ross Stanley (organ)
http://soundcloud.com/ma-music

Rory Simmons (trumpet/electronics)

http://rorysimmons.com/

Terje Evensen (drums/electronics)
http://www.terjeevensen.com/

Jeane Added (vocals/bass)
http://www.myspace.com/jeanneadded
?

Love, of and in Autumn.

Last weekend I was out in Vienna and Serbia with Polar Bear, it was an amazing weekend, our first concert was canceled weeks before and due to some travel complexities we had to go out and spend a day just eating and drinking together in Vienna, It’s a hard life sometimes.

Anyway on to Serbia in the smallest and noisiest plane still flying. Our hosts were some of the warmest and most lovely that I can remember and after a very nice concert we were invited to a brilliant little bar situated underneath a bookshop in Novi Sad. It was packed with all the people who ran the concert and all their friends and it became impossible to avoid having a totally brilliant time. We ended up being gently turfed out at about 4:30 in the morning. This allowed us 3 or 4 hours sleep before flying back to London.

Novi Sad bookshop bar....

On our return we were greeted by what can only be described as total chaos on the tube, the closure of one of the lines meant that the trains were absolutely packed. At one point on the journey I looked over to the end of the carriage to see a grown woman and man with a child standing on top of my guitar case. The fun weekend was catching up with me and I was only able to close my eyes and ponder the wisdom of not getting enough sleep.

On returning home I flopped onto my bed and let my eyes close. I was really looking forward to seeing my girlfriend who was still out at work. Then instead of drifting of to sleep, words started to come to me. At first in dreamlike washes, which gradually became more and more lucid. After a little while I opened my eyes again, wrote down the forming words and went into the studio picked up the guitar I made back in 2007 and half an hour later I had this:

My first tune in a very long time, I hope you’ll enjoy it and the story behind it.

J x.

Music using Inductive Pickups.

After making this video I received an email asking if I’d make a couple of pickups for a gentleman in Norway.

I decided that it would be a nice thing to do, so I made these two little beauties.

commercial inductor with 1/4" (guitar type) jack.

Handwound coil with stereo 1/8" (headphone) jack - it's wired as mono

I was actually quite nervous making these things and having someone pay for them. Thankfully the recipient was delighted with his pickups and sent me this piece he made with them.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can hear more of Mads Lund Kolding’s fascinating music HERE!

Take care,

John.

Free Leafcutter John Concert, 2nd Nov 2011

02 November 2011
Camden Arts Centre, Arkwright Road, London, NW3 6DG
020 7472 5500 FREE!

The info:

Artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White develop a series of experimental events exploring the sonic potentials of materials gleaned from the edges of the public domain. Simpson and White have sourced a range of songs from early commercial releases that are currently subject to a conflict in copyright status through a split in ownership between lyrics and musical composition. Manuscripts and recordings have been edited, redacted, cut-up and processed to suppress copyright-secured elements and enable the release of public domain layers from the proprietary control of commercial publishers. Invited guests process the collected material through short live performances.

This hauntological experiment plugs into the beginnings of the recording industry at a time when emerging models of peer-to-peer distribution and collaborative production are urgently problematising established notions around the authorship, ownership and distribution of culture.

The material generated for the project forms the basis of a soundtrack for the artists’ ambitious upcoming film Auditory Learning.

Thursday 06 October 7.00 – 8.30pm

DJ set: Eileen Simpson and Ben White
1920s, 30s and 40s recordings are altered and encoded through autotune, reversed playback and flipped lyrics — techniques ported from R&B and HipHop production. The resultant filtering ensures the suppression of layers still under proprietary ownership but enables the escape of copyright-expired elements that are, for the first time, released into the public domain.

Wednesday 02 November 7.00 – 8.00pm

Live performance: Leafcutter John
Electronic artist Leafcutter John re-visits the material collected for the 6th October DJ set for an exclusive new live performance.

Wednesday 16 November 7.00 – 8.00pm

Live performance: Lauren Doss AKA Mechanical Bride
Mechanical Bride works with the material from the 6th October DJ set and plugs her fractured, stripped back approach to vocals and melody into the project.

Live performances approx 20 mins with accompanying DJ set. Listen live www.thisistomorrow.info

Weekly Music Thing No. 2 : Inductive Pickup

This week I’ll show you how to make a pick up that will let you eavesdrop on the internal sound-world of electronic devices.

The inductive pickup is simply a coil of wire, really that’s all there is to it. Connect that to an amplifier and begin probing your: Laptop, mobile phone, local transport network (London underground tube trains sound amazing!)

As last week, a video follows….

NEXT WEEK: either ‘How to make really good contact mics’ or ‘Messing about with CMOS chips to make a horrid noise” or something altogether different, you decide!

Other Weekly Music Things

Weekly Music Thing No. 1 : Laser Microphone

Tags: experimental music, induction, leafcutter john, microphone, pickup

Weekly Music Thing No. 1 : Laser Microphone

Here is the first ‘Weekly Music Thing’! In the video I take a look at how a cheap laser pointer and a solar cell can be turned into a remarkable optical microphone. I say microphone, but I think that might not actually be the correct description as a microphone converts sound into electricity where as  the laser mic turns light into electricity via the solar cell. It’s more of a Phosophone! Watch the following video for what you’ll need to build it, and I show a few ways it can be used too. I particularly like the fact that you can create sound bouncing the laser off a vibrating or moving surface. Used like this patterns of light and dark create audible tones. It’s supremely simple, fun and cheap which makes it a winner in my book. Have fun and don’t point the laser in your (or anybody’s) eye holes!

Let me know if you find this at all interesting and I’ll do some more….

Some sound highlights from the video

Tags: experimental music, laser, leafcutter john, microphone, phosophone

Bigger, Harder, Stronger, Homemade Piezoelectric Crystals

Had a bash at making larger Rochelle Salt crystals using this method. Initially used too much water and nothing formed overnight. I reheated the liquid and added more Sodium Carbonate until milky, then added Cream of Tartar until it went clear again. Seems like the larger bowl I formed the crystals in coupled with the slightly stronger liquid worked a treat. Most of the following are about 3-4cm in size.

Click to enlarge….

Tags: contact mic, crystal, Homebrew Piezo, homemade contact mic, piezo, Rochelle Salt