Conference mr1pst::music

I have one CD, "Sharkey's Day," and the video "Home of the Brave."  I love them
both, especially the video - everytime I watch it, I get something new out of
it.  She seems to me to be able to really communicate through imagery as well
as music.  I sure would've liked to have seen that performance.  What types
of props, (lighting, film etc.) were used, if any?

- Dave

    The Sanders show was very simple: one keyboard, one screen with one
    slide (of a bleak road reaching into nowhere). Laurie showed a few
    videos featuring her and her clone. In retrospect, I'm not sure what
    the point was in seeing them. She talked about the development of the
    clone character . . . but, gee, I can't remember *why*!
    
    Well, that little mental lapse aside, let's see . . . she talked about
    Helms, what she considers a serious, concerted attempt to destroy
    artistic freedom by the right wing (her seriousness about this really
    impressed me). She talked about Helms liking pictures of snowy
    landscapes that make you feel good, and Mapplethorpe's being after
    something a little bigger, "the big taboos." She talked a lot about the
    atmosphere in the U.S. in recent years of accusation, judgment, and
    intolerance.
    
    She talked about how people from the ad agencies from New York go down
    to SoHo and look at the galleries, then immediately copy what they see,
    comp it up, and a month later it's in an advertisement in a glossy
    magazine -- and thus, she doesn't know where the avant garde is any
    more, or if there even is an avant garde any more.
    
    She told a terrific story about her grandmother, who was a missionary
    to Japan; didn't speak Japanese, didn't know anything about Buddhism,
    but *did* know everything there is to know about hats: how to make
    them, how to wear them with style, etc., etc. The Japanese weren't
    interested in her missionary zeal but were intrigued by her hats; she
    wound up teaching them about hats and they taught her about bonsai.
    This family story leads Anderson to believe that you can't argue people
    into accepting your point of view; you can only communicate from what
    you already deeply love. 
    
    This story is the kind of revealing story/image that I love so much in
    her work.
    
    (I supposed I shouldn't try to recap the entire performance -- it'd
    probably be pretty flat to read about, but if anyone's interested send
    me mail with your DTN. I'm not in ELF, probably because I'm a contractor.)
    
    She read from a script, which made her delivery a little less smooth
    than it might have been, but this wasn't a major problem. Some of what
    she said seemed a little unfocused, not as well integrated as it might
    have been into the flow of story images and ideas.
    
    She sang just a couple of songs, one about the war looking like the 4th
    of July, and one about the Native American man who can't remember the
    words to his traditional songs. She closed with the device that she
    puts in her mouth, and by moving her lips she shapes the tone of a
    violin solo tape being played.
    
    Question: How do you guys find out when she's around? I always scan the
    Globe ads, but if I couldn't go to her performance here, I'd love to be
    able to know if she was appearing in Northampton or Providence. Is
    there any way to find out when an artist is going to be in the general
    Boston/Massachusetts area?
    
    To Dave: She has a couple other albums out, including Big Science. Did
    you know she has two books published, United States and Empty Places?
    
    To -.1: Who's Steve? I agree with you, criticism of the male power
    structure does not automatically constitute "male-bashing." I thought
    her comments about male-female relationships were based in serious
    thought and observation about our lives.

    > To -.1: Who's Steve?
    
    I'm sorry Nancy, my note made reference to Steve Beaupre's review of
    the show which he posted in 45.445 ("Concerts you've been to").
    
    Steve was not, however, the friend of mine who made the "male-bashing"
    comments.
    
    -Scott

    I think some people are confused (or are pretending to be confused).
    
    My comment on .5 is about Scott Kardon's note, which is .2.  OK?
    The "male-bashing_is_OK" comment is _Scott's_, not Laurie Anderson's.
    
    The comment is not appropriate for this conference or any other.
    This is not a matter of PC; it is a matter of John Sims' memo.
    
    I would _love_ to discuss Laurie Anderson, but I have some business to
    attend to regarding appropriateness of notes at the moment.
    
    This (.2) is the kind of unpleasantness that threatens employee
    interest noting, in case you're curious.  The moderator of this
    conference has been informed.  Thank you for your patience.
    \Gary

    People, I'm stepping in here. I'm not taking a side here at all. What I
    want to do people is keep everyone happy, at least to the point where
    you don't harm each other. And so, to that end I am hiding reply .2. I
    am also stating that I think Scott should re-enter the reply without
    the phrase in question. I further ask that everyone else refrain from
    further discussion of the comment in question, but rather talk about
    Laurie. Otherwise, I'm going to have to set a note, that I would
    personally like to participate in, hidden. We'll all lose at that
    point.
    
    Thank you for your understanding.
    
    Brian
    MUSIC Mod

    I apologize for any controversy that my original note caused.  As
    mentioned by a previous noter, the controversial comments were made by
    a friend of mine and were disagreed with by myself.  Laurie had no part
    in that conversation...
    
          <<< HYDRA::DISK_NOTES$LIBRARY:[000000]RADIO_RADIO.NOTE;1 >>>
                           -< Trawling for Dollar$ >-
================================================================================
Note 403.12                      Laurie Anderson                        12 of 13
RAB::KARDON "Big heart, but small veins"             28 lines  10-FEB-1992 12:10
                                 -< Let X = X >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I, too, caught Laurie Anderson's Friday night show at Sanders.  I didn't
    have the benefit of knowing in advance that it was a talk instead of a
    performance, though.  This is the third time that I've seen Laurie.
    The first was at Berkely (and was also an unexpected talk).  The
    second time was for her "Strange Angels" tour.  I can't say that I was
    upset at my expectations being wrong.  Laurie is one of the most
    captivating speakers I've ever heard and I enjoyed her talk.  I think
    Steve did a great job summarizing her performance.
    
    The only thing I disagreed with him about was when he said that her
    talk was disjoint and too long.  I felt that this was done on purpose.
    There were several times during the show where she got caught in a
    rat-hole with herself only to be caught in another and another.  She
    always unwound them in the same sequence in which they were begun,
    though.  Being someone who feels that many topics naturally lead to
    other (sometimes unrelated) ones, I really enjoyed this.  It reminded
    me of some of my favorite conversations with people.
    
    I also had a big argument with the person I went with who thought that
    she was a little too PC.  I disagreed.  I admitted that many of her
    stands overlapped with the PC movement, but that she made them because
    she thought they were right - not because they were the PC things to say.
    And that the audience agreed with her, because she made sense - not out
    of some blind obedience.
    
    	:            :
    	:  CENSORED  :
    	:            :
    
    -Scott

    Brian, you mentioned to me once that you'd done some work for Laurie
    Anderson. Would you describe what you did? Did you ever have anything
    to do with the filters that create the car salesman and the female
    chorus?
    
    --Nancy

A friend of mine said he believes that Laurie hosted (?) a PBS TV show some
number of years back?  Anyone know about this?

- Dave

    RE: 14,15
    
    I'll start with .15. I do remember such a show, I saw a few episodes.
    It was the start of Laurie's shift toward being a "performance artist"
    as opposed to a "musical artist". I think right now that Laurie should
    be classified almost exclusively as "performance art" (I'm not saying
    that in a derogatory sense; she's just not performing what I would term
    a music concert anymore).
    
    And now for .14.
    
    No, I didn't really work for/with Laurie. I was part of the Peter
    Gabriel camp at the time Excellent Birds was done, doing synth
    programming. We reworked some of the Synclavier stuff at Real World to
    give the song more of a rhythm. The first pass at Excellent Birds was
    more like Laurie's traditional song-poem style. The percussion in that
    song is the Gabriel influence. Anyway, I claim no real connection other
    than running a piece of envelope shaper software over the samples to give
    them more of a thwap. It took 10 or 15 minutes, most of it spent loading/
    writing the samples from/to floppies.
    
    What was kinda neat, is I was traveling with Peter when Laurie called
    him one day and asked him to appear with her in New York. The schedule
    could not be worked out as Peter was due in LA (I believe) the next
    morning. But when I went to see Laurie at the Opera House in Boston,
    she was showing slides behind the musicians. One of the slides was a
    bunch of post-it type notes, in her handwriting, with various reminders
    of things to do. On one note: "Call Peter about New York."
    
    Well, I thought it was cool...
    
    Brian

    Was the show "Live from Off Center"? She did some videos to introduce
    episodes of that show.

    Brian,
    
    Was it the reworked version that became the bonus cut on the So CD
    (where it was called This is the Picture)
    ?  It seems a bit funkier and more rhythmic than the version on Laurie's
    album.  Both are great in their own way.
    
    Darnley
    
    

    RE: .18
    
    Darnley,
    
    I reworked the Synclavier stuff for Laurie's version and copied the
    samples to the Fairlight for Peter's version. I had more to do, but not
    much more, with Peter's version... like I said before, I claim no real
    connection to either version. That would be like my claiming to have
    worked with an artist who I soldered a cable for... we're talking
    completely non-artistic involvement, just pure and simple grunt-work
    (at least as far as Excellent Birds is concerned).
    
    Brian

    Brian, or anybody else who knows--
    
    Can you explain about the filters Laurie uses? How do they work? At
    Sanders, she was demonstrating them, and she demonstrated the one that
    creates a chorus of female voices. But when she used it, there was a
    surprisingly deep voice in it, and she glanced at the back of the stage
    (where her support people presumably were) and grinned and said,
    "Sounds as if a guy got in there."
    
    So, can the filters be programmed -- can you switch what they're doing
    to your voice? Or are they fixed -- you get a filter that does one
    thing or set of things, and that's that?
    
    (What is a filter, anyway? Is it a chip or a program that modifies the
    frequency of the analog waves of your voice?) 
    
    Does each filter have a certain range -- like, for example, a filter
    that deals with a fairly high range, one that does a middle range, one
    that does a basso profundo range -- or can one filter do any range of
    sound from high to low? 
    
    Does a certain filter make that goofy salesman voice? 
    
    Can you design your own filter, or are they products that certain
    companies periodically release, like  "Here's Our Latest Boffo Goofy
    Salesman Filter!" Or do you work with a programmer and say, "I'd like a
    filter that sounds a little like Daffy Duck but with a sort of brass
    section sound, too, please" and a programmer writes the code to make it
    happen? 
    
    Hope this isn't too technical a question, but those filters are so
    central to her music, I've always been curious about them.
    
    --Nancy

    As far as I know, Laurie uses a batterie of processing equipment, some
    of it part of her Synclavier and some of it is external processing. In
    particular, the Eventide H3000S is used to do a lot of the stuff, but
    she also has some of the older Eventide processers (900? I think...).
    
    Without a great deal of technical detail, I shall try and explain how
    these things work. To start with, envision a computer with a memory
    that you can continuously stuff things in the front and they eventually
    come out the rear (First In, First Out, or FIFO). Now, add to the front
    a piece of silicon known as an Analog-to-Digital convertor (ADC). What
    an ADC does is "sample" the incoming wave-form, such as a voice or
    instrument, and convert the amplitude information into a number. A
    series of such numbers represents the integration of the waveform over
    time using a discrete approximation algorithm very similar, in
    function, to the summation to infinite limit that we learned in
    Calculus 2 when they introduced the concept of integration. In other
    words, the ADC is reproducing the waveform as digital information.
    
    At the back end of the chain, we add a corresponding piece of silicon,
    known as a Digital-to-Analog Convertor (DAC). The DAC uses a fixed
    sample rate (which happens to be the same as the input) to convert the
    bit stream back into an analog signal. The mechanics of this process
    are quite technical, but for anyone's who's interested, I recommend the
    book "Digital Audio" by Ken Pohlman. Caveat Emptor: be prepared to dive
    into some pretty heavy math if you decide to go further.
    
    Anyway, now that we have our FIFO computer and a way to get analog
    information in to/out of it, we can do some interesting things. For
    instance, if we vary the time it takes for the digitized signal to pass
    from the start to the end of the FIFO memory, we can cause a delay in
    the signal. If we mix the delayed signal with an unprocessed signal, we
    can do effects like echo. If we add a feedback loop, where we pass the
    processed signal back into the front of the memory, we can create
    effects like reverb. If we slightly vary the clock rate of the
    sampling internal to our effect, we can create effects like vibrato.
    
    Now, let's take it a step further and understand the frequency content.
    Remember that if we multiply any musical tone by 2, we raise the pitch
    one octave. If we divide by 2, we drop the pitch one octave. We can
    acheive the same effect by modifying the digital sample rate. For
    instance, if we sample at 48khz and play back at 24 khz, our signal
    will be half the pitch, or 1 octave lower (let's forget the problems in
    filtering the output which result in changing the sample rate). A more
    common solution to the pitch change problem is to change our increment
    value in our FIFO memory. For instance, when we sample we may sample at
    every location in memory, but when we play-back we may skip, say, every
    other location. Typically, a pitch-shifting device would have an
    algorithm which equates the musical interval you are trying to achieve
    with some corresponding increment in the memory. So pitch shifting is
    easy, controlling it is not.
    
    The reason for this is simple: suppose we return to the example of
    skipping every other memory location (raising the pitch one octave).
    The problem is, we also move through our memory twice as fast. This
    results in a phrase that is half as long as the original when shifted
    in pitch one octave. Most cheapo pitch shifters have this problem. This
    results in the infamous "Chipmunks" syndrome. Very expensive devices
    have algorithms which detect suitable loop-points in the waveform and
    loop so that the envelope period remains constant, regardless of pitch
    (the Fairlight CMI is one such device - surprisingly, the Synclavier
    does not have a "real-time" equivalent).
    
    Anyway, there you have it, pitch shifting (or filtering, as you call
    it), for beginners.
    
    Brian

    
    Thanks, Brian. 
    
    That's all prety clear -- actually, I got my start in the computer biz 
    writing manuals for Cyborg Corporation, a funky outfit in Newton,
    MA, that made analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter boards,
    as well as digital I/O boards. (They were used with heat and pressure
    sensors, mostly, mostly for laboratories.) So, once you got going on your
    explanation, I thought, "Gee, this all sounds pretty familiar." I get
    the octave and delay ideas quite clearly.
    
    But what creates that actual change in the timbre of the sounds, from
    Anderson's natural voice to the absurdly thickish, sorta plummy,
    back-of-the-throat tones of the salesman, or the sharper, more nasal
    tones of one of the chorus members? I mean, the filtered voices sound as if
    they're articulated in different parts of the human throat and mouth
    and involve different kinds of resonance including chest, nose, and
    top-of-the-head resonances. That's what amazes me. 
    
    I don't want you to try to summarize ten or twenty years' experience as
    a sound engineer; maybe this starts to get too wordy for you to deal
    with in a note, if so, let me know and maybe one of these days I'll
    call you and you can spend, oh, a couple of hours filling me in on this
    stuff . . . . (By the way, I do know about COMMUSIC, but so far I
    haven't been able to follow the conversation very well. Everybody has
    very specific, technical concerns dealing with specific products and
    procedures -- way ahead of what I know about.)
    
    Some of my curiosity is purely practical: do you have to get someone to
    program this stuff for you, or is it part of a finished product you can
    play around with by yourself to get the results you want?
    
    (The Cambridge Center for Adult Education is offering a short course in
    MIDI technology for absolute beginners, so if I can swing it, I'm going
    to take it. So don't feel that you have to construct my understanding
    from the ground up. But if any of my questions interest you, great.)
    
    

    >But what creates that actual change in the timbre of the sounds, from
    >Anderson's natural voice to the absurdly thickish, sorta plummy,
    >back-of-the-throat tones of the salesman, or the sharper, more nasal
    >tones of one of the chorus members? I mean, the filtered voices sound as if
    >they're articulated in different parts of the human throat and mouth
    >and involve different kinds of resonance including chest, nose, and
    >top-of-the-head resonances. That's what amazes me. 
    
    When you sample and transpose a sound, any sound, you enlarge or shrink
    its resident formant frequencies.  So if you transpose Laurie's voice
    down, you enlarge the apparent chest/sinus/throat area, causing a
    different formant.  Likewise transposing up, even slightly.
    
    I have a friend who physically resembles his father very closely -
    same size chest, throat, and head.  Not surprisingly I can't tell their
    voices apart on the telephone.
    
    karl

    OK, I'll take it a step further...
    
    Another aspect of the purely digital processing I described in .21 is
    "filtering" in the traditional sense. Using digital algorithms, it is
    possible to create parameter driven filters very similar to the
    "parametric EQ" one would find on a mixing console. The digital
    equivalents are much more flexible though, as you can very easily vary
    the poles (frequency), width (Q) and gain of the filter and tweek it in
    real time (although it should be noted that digital filters work on
    "signal history" a subject *far* too complex for me to get into here).
    Again, read Pohlman if you feel so inclined.
    
    Many of the effects you describe can be acheived using a combination of
    pitch shifting and filtering. I believe the Eventide H3000S even has
    some fairly rudimentary filtering algorithms.
    
    An easier way of doing this type of subtractive/additive synthesis is
    to just use the old analog module stuff. The older analog synthesizers
    usually had a fairly well defined set of modules: Voltage Controlled
    Oscillator (VCO), Voltage Controlled Amplifier (VCA) and Voltage
    Controlled Filter (VCF). These basic circuits are Bob Moog's
    contribution to music-kind. Each of these modules typically had two
    inputs: the unprocessed input signal and a "control signal". The
    control signal would control the pitch of a VCO, the gain of a VCA, or
    the frequency/Q of a VCF. You can patch a whole bunch of these bables
    together in any order you want and do some pretty wild stuff. For
    instance, I frequently use a VCO controlled by a foot-pedal, plugged
    into the modulation input on a digital deley, to get some pretty wild
    delay effects for my Chapman Stick. With these basic building blocks,
    only the imagination limits the result.
    
    The Synclavier, which Laurie uses, has little subroutines which can
    perform each of the processing steps one would associate with the old
    analog synthesizer building-blocks. Some of them can be used for
    real-time effects control. Again, it would take me a whole book to
    explain how it all works (which, BTW, I'm very seriously considering
    writing). However, it is important to note that the Synclavier is also
    an FM synthesizer (like the Yamaha DX7, but in fact the Synclavier came
    first). The Amplitude and Harmonic envelopes of FM synthesis can be
    used to approximate the effects of the VCA and the VCF, respectively.
    
    For more information on FM synthesis, check the (circa) September 1973
    issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society for John
    Chowning's (Stanford University) ground-breaking article on the
    subject.
    
    Brian