Perhaps my favorite photo taken in Morocco.

Some people are asking me what was my setup for the live act I did last saturday. Here it is.

The core of my setup is an Apple Powerbook running Ableton Live with a M-Audio FW410 sound card. I’ve got a TC Electronic Konnekt 24D but the driver doesn’t work well as of now. This time I also brought my Mackie 1202 mixer.

For the noisy part at the beginning of my set, I used a Playstation-like USB game pad for controlling Live. The software I use for mapping the USB data to midi is Steim Junxion. So this game pad works as a midi controller and lets me mute tracks, launch samples, play with effects, etc.

Then comes the second part with the guitar. Here I use a small magnet motor that I put on the guitar’s strings and that makes them vibrate. This is a good way to get harmonics too. The sound from the guitar first goes to a distortion pedal RAT II (I love distortion pedals!), then goes through a multi-effects Adrenalinn II and through a Loop Station Boss RC-2 for loop recording. The signal eventually goes to the mixer.
There’s also a short jack plugged into an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff (the russian one) going to the sound card and hereby to Live. The signal is completely saturated (on purpose) and I use a granulator VST effect on it. On top of that I run a synthesizer and some samples within Live.

The final part (electronica/abstract hip-hop) is fully computer-based. One track for the beats: I use Battery from Native Instruments with a bunch of VST effects (LiveCut and Frohmage for instance). 2 more tracks: one for a synthesizer and one more for the lyrics. I control all of that with a small Doepfer midi controller.

That’s it!

For the visuals, I developed a Processing patch. I already wrote about this in a previous post.

P.S. I posted this screenshot on my Flickr page and I saw yesterday that Joshua Davis added it as a favorite. Cool!

I’ve got 2 short videos of my set at Le Bourg. I’m wondering how I’ve got such long arms(?!).

Great night yesterday at Le Bourg. We didn’t expect so many people to come actually! So I guess it was a success.
I was the first one to play. Everything went smoothly and I managed to project visuals. I recorded my set, you can download it here: http://www.furibond.com/sounds/tokoloten_-_live_@_le_bourg_lausanne.mp3
3 parts: Noise - Ambient - Abstract hip-hop/electronica

Thanks to Les Poissons Autistes and Le Bourg who organized this event! By the way you should check Le Bourg’s program which is always interesting.

In a previous post, I said I was planning to make a hydrophone… I eventually built it yesterday! It’s nothing else as a contact microphone embedded into a box actually. It just passed the waterproof test successfully. I haven’t yet checked the sound it produces. I’ll have to find out which are the best post-effects to use on it… resonator, granulator… we’ll see.

On Mai 19 takes place “Les Chaises Musicales” at Le Bourg. 6 artists from the swiss electronic/experimental music scene will play. Les Poissons Autistes kindly proposed me to participate. Sets will be 30-minute long, I’m now preparing mine that should be made of 3 parts: 1. Noise / 2. Ambient / 3.Beats! I will be using some cool stuff like a game controller, a magnet motor, contact mic… and I plan to run a Processing patch for doing visuals. Lots of things to control for my small brain!

The line-up is:
22:00 DJ Philipella (one of the 2 heads of Les Poissons Autistes)
22:30 Tokoloten (me)
23:00 Les Poissons Autistes
23:30 Sanatorium
00:00 Bio
00:30 Hopen
01:00 Larkian
01:30 DJ Philippella

Share is an audio-video project launched 6 years ago in New-York by Barry Manalog, geoffGDAM et Newclueless. Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into the system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video. Some Share communities were born in Montreal, Melbourne, St Petersburg… and now Geneva. There’ll be some Share showcases on May 1-2-3 at the Contemporary Art Museum that will be part of the upcoming Mapping festival.
Eric of Sigma6 made a website for Share GVA.

I’d really like to go there and jam but I’m not sure yet I can move to Geneva next week.

I found again someone who posts amazing photos on Flickr. Her nickname is Cypherone and she’s from Taiwan. Some photos look like drawings. I’d really like to know which post-effects to apply for getting such a result.

I saw Q Bert at Montreux Jazz Festival last year. Same day as Kid Koala and Amon Tobin… that makes a great night I guess!

After the update of the firmware of my sound card (M-Audio FW410), it started clipping on the line and instrument inputs… Moreover I’ve never been happy with the latency of this card. So I’m now looking at the sound cards on the market excluding M-Audio products. I want a Firewire card with at least 4 line/instrument inputs, 4 line outputs, midi in/out and as compact as possible. Some cards that fit my needs:

• Echo Audiofire 4
• Edirol FA-101
• TC Electronic Konnekt 24D
• Motu Ultralite
• RME Fireface 400

Motu and RME are too expensive. As for now my choice would go to the Konnekt 24D which has a built-in DSP that enables to run some effects like compressor and reverb. This may be a good option as my CPU gets sometimes overloaded. As TC Electronic is known for making quality product, this card looks really great. This is confirmed by a test done by Audiofanzine (in french).

Update: I ordered it…