Nathan Bowen's Blog

Hi SEAMUS folks:

Thanks for your interest in my upcoming installation at SEAMUS 2012. If you’re familiar with TouchOSC and know how to transfer files onto iTouch/iPhone, then you can download the custom layout here.  If you’re not familiar with the app, I have step-by-step instructions below.

(Unfortunately I have not yet been able to include other apps or mobile platforms reliably, but hope to expand compatibility soon.  If you want to participate but do not have an iPhone/iTouch, or if you do not wish to spend $4.99 on this app, there will be a devices on hand at the installation to use.)

2. Download TouchOSC Editor to your desktop or laptop (you can get it here for a Mac, here for PC, and here for Linux).

3. Download this custom layout, which is a zipped .touchosc file.

4. Transfer the file 4Q_SEAMUS_2012.touchosc  from your desktop/laptop to the iTouch/iPhone.  One does this by opening up the attached file in TouchOSC Editor, then transferring the file to the phone over a WiFi network (or one can use iTunes as well).  There’s documentation here explaining the process, and additionally here’s a YouTube video someone made explaining how to do it.

Once you have the file on your device, you’ll be set to go for the installation.  The first page of the file looks like this:

 I’ll help with connectivity at SEAMUS.  Let me know if you have any questions!

Check it out by clicking here. This is music I did for a dance piece by MELD Danceworks. It’s also available on Spotify, Amazon, and other fine online music stores.

This is an update to the patches I presented at Expo ’74 2011. Grab the patches here.

Of all the available OSC apps out there, I mainly use TouchOSC with Max. One of the main features I like about TouchOSC is the ability to create custom layouts and upload them easily to my phone. Unfortunately, this feature is currently only available to Apple devices, and Android users kind of get the shaft. I also like Control, but am still learning Javascript. In my experience Control has been a little bit buggy, but that could also be a result of my ineptitude.

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions. Here is the documentation for uploading TouchOSC patches over WiFi. Here is a video explaining how to do it.

Grab these patches n things.

And the TouchOSC Editor on this page (scroll down)

If you don’t have the CNMAT Everything package, you can get it here. We’ll make use of [osc-route] today. If you want to just grab this object instead of the library, here the mxo and help files.

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Here’s a few of my music technology students working with 4Quarters. Here we were experimenting with an overall plan to move as a group from one set of sound files to the next. Synchronicity is a problem, but I think it can be worked out with practice. This is a first run with four people together.

You’ll see some other features briefly, such as panning and EQ. Here volume is controlled by accelerometer (along the Y axis). All these players are using custom layouts I designed in TouchOSC.

So this post is mostly for people with whom I’m in personal contact. Here are the custom layouts for TouchOSC I designed, to be used to play with 4Quarters.

In order to get these files on your iPhone, you’ll need to:

1) purchase and download TouchOSC
2) download TouchOSC Editor on your computer, available here (scroll down the page to find it).
3) open the custom layout files (in 4Q_TouchOSC_Files.zip) from within TouchOSC Editor, and use the sync feature with your phone and your computer both being on the same network. Documentation here.

Android users: it looks like there’s no good way to get these files to your computer. I’m looking into developing custom layouts using Control instead. It’s free on both iPhone and Android. Stay tuned…

In 1888 Edward Bellamy wrote Looking Backward: 2000-1887, a novel with a Back-To-The-Future plot.  A young Boston gentlemen is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century.  I haven’t read it, but found Emily Thompson* quoting from it in an explanation of the demise of Victorian parlor playing.  The quote of interest, which I’ll share, is extremely prophetic, especially for 1888.  The scene involves a twentieth-century hostess and Mr. West, the protagonist.  The hostess asks whether Mr. West likes music, and then asks whether he’d like to hear some 21st-century music:

“Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,”[he] said. “To me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Did you think I was going to play or sing to you?. . . Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or playing music at all.” (click here to see the chapter online)

It goes on to describe how they select music from a card that Mr. West described as having the ‘largest programme of music I had ever seen,’ being ‘as various as it is long.’ This of course, evokes something like an iPod, tablet computer, or one of those silly DirecTV music menus, and is a pretty slick prediction in its own right.  But I’m way more interested in the expectation for performance.

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Take a look at this photo.  Note the use of the earbuds, designed for one person, but shared here.  I can’t help but think about the way that iPods and headphones are used like this.  On the one hand, the iPod (or mobile phone) is isolating.  We tune out the outside world and create a little bubble of insolation.  An escape.  If you ever take the subway in New York, you see it all the time.  Packed in the subway car like sardines (especially at rush hour), people find their happy place by wearing the headphones and closing their eyes.  It’s  a way of visually signaling one’s established privacy in a public space.

Now, the thing I like about the photo above is that we’re seeing the portability of the iPod leveraged for a deliberately social activity: sharing.  If there was a better way of sharing the music, I’m sure these guys would do it, but as a matter of pragmatism, they sort of make do, both leaning forward to figure out a distance that won’t yank the earbud from his friend’s ear.  This, like the isolated subway travelers, is also a frequent scene.

I just came across this article by Paul Lansky that discusses the emergence of a new kind of musician: the music-giver.  Not really a composer, nor a performer, nor just a listener.  The music-giver is a little bit of each of these, though.

Lansky has been on my radar for a while since he’s taught at cool schools (Princeton and CalArts), composed good music (here’s his discography), and has written good essays (like this).  Anyway, in the article I’m reading he talks about how the advent of recorded music has fundamentally changed a very very old procedure for enjoying music: the composer/audience/listener paradigm.

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