So if you’re in Sydney you should listen to FBi all week. And if your elsewhere you should still listen to FBi all week.
If you’re in Melbourne then this Thursday you should come down to The Builders Arms where I’ll be playing with The Motifs and Tailor Made For A Small Room who are both great. I’ll have my party hat on and will blast some new tunes.
you might have noticed footage from the cuba is japan clip. it’s the first time it’s graced the intertrons and it may actually be completed sometime in the near future. ooh, tantalising eh?
for something not so completely different… i’m playing in adelaide next saturday! poster:
this site is going to be revamped in preperation for the launch of the new album so prep those eyeballs for some amazement.
gigs! i’m opening for the spectacular creatures of silence next tuesday the 11th of may at the brunswick hotel. should be a grand night. if you’re a melbournite, be there or be a pear.
then may 22nd i’m playing at the exeter in radelaide with the tenacious tiger choir. yay rads!
i’m also playing bass for the inexplicable tailor made for a small room this sunday the 9th at the builders arms. lots of fun stuff to post shortly. including the release of some sort of album. oh my.
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.
Zeal returns to the stage in his Melbourne debut (sort of) with some tops bands.
It’ll be an awesome night of experimental indie-poptronica, ear melty goodness and I’ll be unleashing some new songs and brandishing some new stagecraft. Woop!
I’ve had a few questions and comments regarding playing chords with axis. Here’s how to do it in ableton:
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…
i know i haven’t been gigging very much this year. and i could forgive you for thinking i’ve not been doing much on the live music front but you’d be wrong. so very wrong. i don’t want to make you feel bad or anything, it’s just the truth. this is my new guitar hero to midi max app i’ve been working on. it turns the guitar into a playable instrument while keeping all the control functionality of my previous patch. here’s the hastily thrown together blurb i slapped up on my youtube.
An app i’m working on called AXIS. it enables an xbox usb guitar hero controller to output midi to control ableton or any other software or hardware that eats midi.
it has two modes – play and control.
in control mode the buttons, whammy and 3 tilt sensors send out midi messages. this is intended for interfacing with software.
in play mode any musical scale can be superimposed over a guitar hero scale built on the first four buttons. the up pick can be offset to allow rapid playing of fifths or whatnot. the orange button acts as a modifier key allowing change of key and offset on the fly. the D-pad changes scale and the back and start keys change volume (velocity). the three tilt sensors and whammy send out MIDI CCs to control what ever. the tilt sensors on this guitar are particularly awesome, they sit on three different axes and you can make the guitar really expressive.
there’s a little HUD you can sit on top of what ever you’re controlling to monitor mode, key, volume, offset and scale.
i’m sorting out some documentation and then i’ll release it as a stand alone mac app. if a max-head out there want’s to help me port it over to windows that’d be ace. mac and windows interpret the guitar controller differently. once finished, i’ll release the source so people can modify it for other system’s guitars too. I went for an xbox guitar because it’s usb and the tilt sensors and whammy work which is a problem for ps2 guitars/adapters.
at the moment i’m building up my new live show utilizing the guitar to simultaneously shred, trigger samples and effects, control the rest of the track and control the accompanying video. see, i have been busy! and not just on this. i’ve got a whole album of new material which i’ll be relentlessly plugging through out the near future.
this post is little a bit of a tease, now i think of it. perhaps this video might make it appear more substantial.
for the last few weeks i’ve been working on a clip for melbourne band cuba is japan. they make sorta soundtracky, interesting music. it’s really great stuff to work with visually… it’s great stuff in general. i’ll put a video sample up once my internet is dethrottled. it’s a fun project to have been working on too. broken into three sections, the clip starts with bugs coming out of cocoons, continues with bugs flying and ends with bugs dying. my job was the begining and end with the flying bit in the middle being animated by another robert elsewhere in australia. it’s all being pieced together by various animators, illustrators, director/producer/editors and new zealanders via the wonders of the internet… and snail mail. when i post a video about this i’ll put up a run down of everyone involved and their particular claims to awesomeness.
in other news: ZEAL RETURNS TO THE STAGE!
and this is going to be something special. why? because: ZEAL IS PLAYING WITH ALEKS AND THE RAMPS AT THE JADE MONKEY JULY 9TH!
it’s difficult to explain how exciting this is. i’ve wanted to play with aleks and the ramps for years. so come! it’s my first gig in 6 months! hear the new album! watch my new guitar hero max patch in action! see my audio/visual spectacular of which the visual component isn’t quite complete!
click here for the facebook event. invite your friends
so i’ve booked an impossible number of gigs just as i was set to hide away and record. hmmm. solution: to write and perform 1 new song at each show. here they are:
wow. cut and paste has come along way since highschool plagerization and i don’t even know who to thank for it. anonymous programmer, my gratitude knows no horizon.
Zeal is 25 year-old Melbournite, Robert Jarvis. He makes indietronica in his bedroom studio and animated music videos about cats in space on his bedroom floor.
Elsewhere...