My album is ranked third on a whothehell.net  ”list”.  It’s the second time i’ve ever been on a list and it’s still fun.



Last week my song “clouds” made a top songs of 2010 podcast on polaroids of androids.  it was the first time i’d ever been on a list and it was fun.

i played alot of shows this year, all of which had secret words, many of which i can’t remember.  some were:

• alphabetical
• curvacious
• rod stewart: android
• william shatner
• gumption
• dental plan
• dragon master
• griffin slayer
• cromulent
• lights in the skies

the best gigs of the year were hobart + music = yeah and the gate.

i also had a great time at this is not art where i sat on a panel and talked about axis.

i got to make a mixtape sorta thing for a polaroids of androids podcast and inflict my taste in music on the masses.

i put out an animated film clip for vigilante with midi and lights:

my name was in sos

i released my debut album and it landed album of the week on FBi.

it was also uploaded to a russian file-sharing website.

it’s been a good year.  onwards into a happy and productive twenty-eleven!

bob.

like these ones:

If you’re heading to this year’s TINA I’m going to part of a panel discussing making music with game controllers smart phones, not so smart phones etc.  I imagine I’ll be talking about AXIS and and MAX/MSP…  The TINA/Sound Summit Program puts it like this:

Saturday, October 2nd:

2.00pm – 4.00pm: Artist Presentation
Instant Expert: Know Your Gadgets
Process Space (401 Hunter St)

Facilitator: Andrew Tuttle (Sound Summit)
Participants: Brett Kinny (Megatroid), Jason Forrest (Cock Rock Disco, DJ Donna Summer, Nightshifters; USA), Pia van Gelder (Dorkbot), Robert Jarvis (Zeal)

The ongoing development of gamer controller technology and continuing innovations in smartphone capabilities have contributed to an increasing number of electronic musicians composing and performing with these tactile devices. Learn some tricks on how to revolutionise your live performance, and have a whole lot of fun doing it.

Should be a lot of interesting ideas in one place!

If you’re in Adelaide Monday the 20th of September (tonight)  come down to the wheatsheaf from around 8 to see Virtual Proximity play with me in my VJ disguise.

i’ve upped some video from last weeks birmingham gig.  i think this might be an internet debut for this track and one of the first examples of axis out in the wild!  much more coming up soon.

This’ll only work in ableton but there might be ways to do this using comprable vst plugins etc.

The new Zeal set is coming together and the first of many Melbourne gigs is lined up for April.  Oh yeah, and did i mention I have a new album ready for release?  next few posts should be bigguns…

zeal has been appearing in interesting corners of the blogosphere in the last couple of days.  there’s an interview at fiese falle about process and gear.  they’re the sort of things that interest me in interviews so maybe you’ll be into it.

also, there’s a write up about my guitar hero to midi app AXIS on one of my fav blogs – hack a day.

the post has drawn out some entertaining flames like: “Get a haircut and a real job.  Also, learn to play the real guitar. It’s a lot more fun, I promise.”

upon reading that i got a hair cut and a real job and learned to play the “real” guitar.  it’s not as fun.

speaking of fun – fun new things to buy appearing soon and even fun new ways to buy said fun new things.   but for now…

bob out.

My Xbox Guitar Hero to MIDI application AXIS is available now!  The videos below explain all:

Mac users:

• Get AXIS 1.0 HERE.

• You’ll also need the Tattiebogle Xbox drivers from here.

• If you get the dreaded blinking green light there’s now a solution!  Check here.

Windows users:

• Get AXIS 1.0 HERE.

• You’ll also need LoopBe from here.

• Quicktime’s required for the Heads Up Display.  I’d recommend Quicktime Alternative.

• If the Xbox drivers don’t install automatically try here.

AXIS was built in Max/MSP.  If you’d like to adapt it for a different guitar or anything just get in touch and I’ll send you the source.

spent the last two weeks finishing my new album.  i don’t think i’ve mentioned what’s it’s going to be called yet…  i don’t think i will now either.  but i will moon soon.  a few tracks are mastered and i’m being a one man CD duplication factory this very second, pumping out a small pile of cd singles.  feels like we should have been done with these lumbering circular plastic things 5 years ago.  catch up radio! next step, artwork.  it’s quite exciting.  you’ll like the album, i promise.  it makes mention of robots a few times and there’s this three note refrain that’s sprinkled through out the 15 or so tracks which all weave together.  it’s almost a concept album… just with a poorly defined concept…  more of a unproven hypothesis album.

also on the work bench, for all you unfortunate souls, i’m getting AXIS up and running on windows… i say that but really xp’s alright.  the windows versions going to be minus a few small features just because of the way the windows drivers interpret the guitar (or unless someone else can fix it).  this is one big step closer to release meaning it will be out before the years up.

i’ve been making stickers too.  as i promised: robots and swear words.  if you want one you have two options.  the hard way: print out the above robot on sticker paper and cut it out.  or the super easy way: enter my EP + sticker give away! there’s four days left and it’s super easy.

back to the assembly line for me.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE:

i know now some of you might think this whole thing’s a trick, that they are both obviously exactly the same video, but i promise you there are some subtle differences. It might help to watch on a larger screen…

and if you want to do that you can! because COACH is going to be screened through out july at fed square in melbourne thanks to a competition curated by the portable film festival. it’s fun news, coach has been pretty underground since its creation. so if you’re around melbournia between July 15th to 25th go and see it debut daily for ten days … i don’t mean you should go see it all 10 of those days. just the first day. and the last day. and the day right in the middle. and the two days between the first day and the middle day and the middle day and the last day. then arrange yourselves into human sculptures to represent the screening times you’re attending. tearing it’s debut from the 4th dimension into the 3rd with little forethought to the dire consequences for the cosmos. that would be an apt debut…

while this is an patch debut! the max/msp patch i built to drive my guitar hero midi controller.

i started out rebuilding my original ps2 controller patch and i’ve ended up with a pretty neat little mac app that turns your xbox360 guitar hero controller into a fully playable instrument covering up to and over 3 octaves. if you’re on windows and have max/msp (or the free max/msp runtime) it should work too.

you can choose a key and a scale and then play using a 15 note guitar-hero scale. it’s not hard and as long as you’re in the right key there aren’t any wrong notes. there’s a little heads up display you can put on top of what ever you’re controlling that tells you your current key and scale, along with whether you’re in either play or control mode. i’m getting it as user friendly as possible and writing up some documentation and then i’ll put it up here for download along with videos of it in action at the ramps show and other fun stuff. woo.

bob.