Thanks to Chuang Tyng-Ruey for the photos (used under CC Attribution license).

Nice! The Big Question performance went pretty much as planned. I was very impressed by the sounds Lee Chun coded up in real-time using Pure Data, and I hope we can do something together in the future. I did a twenty-minute solo set before being joined first by Chang Jui-chuan and then Kou Chou Ching. I love how adding more performers to the mix bumps up the energy levels. People were on their feet and dancing for Freedom Zen, so a nice first live performance there for Jui-chuan and me. And speaking of bumping up the energy levels, Kou Chou Ching really let rip! My big thanks to Jui-chuan, Fan-chiang, Fish Lin, and DJ J-little. We had a small meeting before the show and solidified some plans for a joint album featuring Kou Chou Ching, Chang Jui-chuan, DJ Point and myself to be released around June 2009 – watch this space.

The part I was most nervous about was doing the Ableton Live mix – live in front of people.  Before the show I’d gone around recording random audience members, asking them to give me small sound bites to use in the mix. By the time I got to do the live mix, the audience had shrunk considerably  and remaining audience members had had ample helpings of the Free Beer (ie. brewed according to a CC licensed recipe) – I was very relieved to have the pressure released somewhat. I thought the live mix sounded pretty cool, thank you very much. Keeping in mind how I’ve been at it for less than two weeks. Unfortunately the recording I made didn’t amount to much, so I took some time yesterday to recreate the mix using the same sample-pool. What you hear is 95% the Live mix with about 5% sweetening added because I couldn’t resist. I think it’s pretty cool to zone out to.

You can listen to the whole mix and download a copy from the SoundCloud player below.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The Big Question Party

I’ll be performing live in Taipei again this coming Saturday at the party to The Big Question conference with Kou Chou Ching and Chang Jui-chuan. Jui-chuan and I have been looking forward to performing Freedom Zen together for a long time, so this should be great. I’m also looking forward to hearing Lee Chun perform – should be cool to swap some ideas, and maybe we can even fit in a bit of a jam.

I’ve been asked to do some kind of audience participation, and to that end I’ve been having a look at Ableton Live again. I got a good deal on a Lite Version of Live (M-Audio Enhanced Edition) a while back, but didn’t explore a fraction of Live’s possibilities then. Having spent quite a bit of time with it this week, a whole world of live DJ’ing has suddenly opened itself up to me. I’m very much a novice still, but I think I’m on the right track. The plan is to sample the audience and throw some of these samples into the mix – fun, if a little scary ;^)

I’ll be performing live with guitarist Chris Bailey at Mojo Coffee in Taichung this Saturday (May 3rd) from around 8pm. We have the honor of being the first artists to perform there, since it’s actually a brand new branch: Mojo Coffee RETRO – and located at Wu Chuan Shi Rd. Section 1, no. 116 (click here for a Google map), right near the art museum.

Chris and I last played together in 2005 with Rhythm Clowns at the Taichung Jazz Festival. Chris will jam with me on my set and I’ll be jamming with him on his. It’s going to be a goodie!!

Photos by Chuang Tyng-Ruey.

Em. and I were in Taipei on Saturday. At the invitation of Chuang Tyng-Ruey of the Academia Sinica and Creative Commons Taiwan, I did my “Jamming with Machines” presentation at the OpenTechSummitTaiwan2008 and also did a small performance later with PigHeadSkin, the first musician to release a Creative Commons album here in Taiwan.

The venue was ASUS Headquarters, and being a huge fan of the EeePC, I felt a bit like a kid in a candy store. I’ve been looking at one of these mini-marvels  for a long time now as a super-portable replacement for the current Ben-Q laptop I’ve been doing my live performances on. Essentially, the EeePC will have to be able to run one instance of a combinator in Propellerhead’s Reason, whilst playing a .wmv with my backtrack and backround visuals.

Though the EeePC is not necessarily intended for doing heavy duty multi-media tasks, I somehow feel confident that it will be up to it. Especially since the new EeePC 900‘s processor is capable of running at full 900MHz capacity with no fixed underclocking as was the case with the EeePC 700 / 701. It didn’t want to do too much fishing about future versions of the EeePC and can’t confirm any of the rumours of an Intel Atom based version or 10″ version coming soon.

What I do know for a fact, though, is that there is a later version in the works (ie. later than the just released EeePC 900) and that this version will come bundled with a couple of my tracks. HOW EXCITING IS THAT!!!

Honestly, ASUS have gotten it so right with the EeePC that I’m over the moon to be associated with it even in the smallest way. Deservedly or not, there’s long been this idea (even amongst the locals) that Taiwan is best at making copies of things rather than being innovative. Hopefully the slew of EeePC competitors that have been announced since its release will go some ways towards putting that notion to rest.

On the Amarok blog Seb Ruiz posted this pic of the very cool Mona Lisa in the lobby of ASUS HQ – made entirely of motherboard components.