Experiments

Why I Invented The Thimbletron

Blog

Monday, 23 March 2009 11:43

The Thimbletron... fake?

Apparently some think so.  On occasion, someone will approach me after a live Thimbletron performance and ask with a wink, "So, does that thing really work?"  Puh-leeze.

In the 1990's I started seeing a problem.  Electronic music was taking over, but there wasn't a good way to perform it.  Sure, you could go on stage with a stack of synthesizers but that wasn't as impressive or useful as it used to be, especially as laptops became more capable and less expensive.  I could see where that was going.  Synthesizers weren't great because it forced the musician to stay put behind them for the whole show, but at least they gave the audience something fancy to look at.  Exchange those synthesizers for one laptop, and you can watch a stage show with all the thrills of someone answering email.

I felt this would eventually foster a mistrust of the musician by the audience.  There's a long history of people accusing electronic musicians of just "pressing a button" to cause their entire performance to happen automatically; we certainly didn't need the beige wall of a laptop screen erecting itself between audience and musician to breed more mistrust.  It seemed like there could be two outcomes: 1) the audience gains faith and trust in the musician, which I thought to be unlikely (especially for non-mainstream, lesser-known electronic musicians, which in those days was almost all of them), or 2) nobody will want to see an electronic music performance, since it's not much of a performance.

I created the Thimbletron as a solution to that.  Since the Thimbletron is mainly two gloves with sewing thimbles on the fingertips, it's wearable and portable.  Sure, the wiring to its electronics tethers you, but that's no worse than a guitarist (plus it adds to the mad science feel of the whole thing).  It's easy to learn, since triggering sounds is done by touching thimbles together, and you could touch fingertips while drunk in the dark (although I do try to avoid performing under those conditions).  Because of that intuitiveness an audience can understand it, at least in that they can watch and learn that certain thimbles trigger certain sounds.  You can stage dive with them on.  And they just look insane.

And yet some people just don't see it, or are still skeptical, and figure that if they catch me off stage and out of character that I'll let them in on the conspiracy.  And you know, I wish I could just tell that it is a fake, just a stage prop, and the whole show was prerecorded.  It would be a LOT easier than designing and building your own electronic music instrument, repairing it time and time again after wires break, and then having it malfunction anyway in mid-show.

I've heard those comments for years, though not for a little while.  Currently we do less shows with the Thimbletron in favor of the Vidimasher 3000. Even still, what I didn't realize until just today is what I wasn't seeing beyond those doubters -- the entire rest of the audience that didn't raise their doubts.  If my Thimbletron shows were to prove that electronic music can make for a good live show, those are the people who prove I succeeded.

And since you are very likely to be reading this because you're in that category -- thank you!

Although it's a very different beast, the Vidimasher 3000 has yet to get any audience doubt.  A good sign which I hope will bode well for our many future shows this year, and beyond.

- TradeMark G.

Sound Of Plaid Archive: Special Guest THE FALLEN

MP3s

Monday, 30 June 2014 17:19

Another week, another music guest: this week it's experimental techno super duo The Fallen!  We've been wanting to get Kevin (FBK) and James (Plural) on our show for a while, and at their great 2014 Fuse Factory performance we cornered them to nail down a date.  Their dark, sparse, atmospheric beats are driven by live energy and gear lust but hide their humor and BFFness which comes out nicely in our interview.

The Fallen links:
SoundCloud / Facebook

Download the episode, or listen to it now:

Want more?  Pop on over to The Sound Of Plaid archives where you can find over a hundred full episodes of our radio show, ready for you to download or listen to whenever you want.  Free.

Candle-powered Wii-hacked Turntable Demo

Videos

Tuesday, 19 October 2010 12:41

 The ECC is in Warsaw, Poland on residency at CCA/CSW in Ujazdowski Castle and conducting new experiments...

I had this idea for a while after making the VidiMasher 3000 that the infrared lights that trigger it could be candles. One pair of dancers here had circular movements they were using, and I thought those might work with the candles as seen from overhead. This video shows my experiment with that, and what better circular movement to play with than a turntable... so I made one. A virtual one. Like, hold a candle, spin yourself around, and it translates into you scratching a turntable sound.

Oh btw, I'm scratching "Pertaining To The Beat" from our upcoming album "All Rights Reserved" on Seeland Records. Hear it in our MP3 section.

Where did the term "mash-up" come from?

Blog

Monday, 16 February 2009 14:09

Longtime ECC fan Steve wrote with a good question, and I thought I'd post the answer here:

Q: How did people describe [Whipped Cream Mix] Rebel Without A Pause when it first came out, before terms like Bastard Pop or Mash-up? Was there a term for it, or did people just explain how you put it together? Or maybe they called it a remix?

A: In many ways I'm incredibly pleased that there's finally a term now... before, in the 80's and most of the 90's, it was very tough to convey or describe some new sample-happy ECC song to someone, especially someone unfamiliar with its cousins: collage, cut-ups, or remixes.  "Remix" was an obvious first choice, but "remix" doesn't convey the use of multiple sources in a work, and remixes are often less complex works artistically.  "Collage" tends to have art world connotations, which could be limiting if you'd like to be booked outside of a gallery.  Other art terms have also been used, including "appropriation" (Duchamp) and "recontextualization".  Other terms attempted to describe sample-based music were born of the 1960's era of tape music, another very experimental/academic world, and many of the terms couldn't shed those connotations/limitations.  (Interestingly, the term "Cut and Paste" is also born of this era, and it only escaped thanks to computers taking over the world).

"Sampling" was a good word to use -- it described music specifically, it had digital (non-tape) connotations, and wasn't an art term.  Still, "sampling" only descibed the technique, and not the result.  For a long time there weren't many results/bands to compare, so this was good enough, and "sample-based/sampling music" was a somewhat acceptable (although clunky) term I used.  But it still sucked.

So, we started making up our own.  John Oswald probably did the best with his 1990 "Plunderphonic" album.  The term was also backed by a pretty good essay he wrote, and I still occasionally hear people talk about plunderphonics as a genre of music.  I wish I could remember who, but one person coined "collage rock" (with an A, instead of "college") which I quite liked, but it was destined to be misread.  My attempt was "Plagiarhythm" (Plagiarism + Rhythm) and so I titled one The Evolution Control Committee album "Plagiarhythm Nation", which did well enough that we got our word in the dictionary!

I'm thrilled to have "Mash-Up" as a widely-recognized term to use now, but of course it comes with its limitations too -- since thousands if not millions can now make their own mashups, I risk using the term and having my music mistaken for some lame, half-baked mashup their 12 year old cousin put on YouTube.  But I'll take the risk... as a new term in the lexicon, it's got a lot less baggage than many of the other terms... a welcome switch from the other side.

- TradeMark G.
16-Feb-09

Thanks to Steve for asking, and thanks to OCCII for republishing this!