Continue reading »]]>

Here I give a quick demo of how to use my new Blender addon: Surround Projection Tools. It lets you very quickly and conveniently setup everything I went over in my tutorial on Creating a Surround Projection Camera Setup in Blender. If you haven’t already seen that, it would probably be good to watch it first as I reference many of the things I covered there.

This was created using Blender 2.6 rev 41805 (svn build) so it will most likely not work with significantly older versions as the python API changed a lot during the development of 2.5. However any recent version should be fine.

CURRENT VERSION (0.1.2)
- streamlined GUI so that the add/remove buttons are in the same place
- added patch suggested by Campbell Barton making new scenes have the original as a background scene (no more remove/re-add if you add/delete objects)

UPDATE: The script is now part of the official contributed extensions. For information about how to get it (and all other contributed scripts) check out the blender wiki. There has also been an update to where this and other experimental scripts are now included in svn builds by the way.

Continue reading »]]>

In this video tutorial, I cover setting up Blender to render a multi-screen surround projection. “What is that and why would I need to know about it” you ask? This is for if you are in a situation where you are making video in 3D for multiple screens surrounding the viewer. Admittedly, this is a very niche situation but if you find yourself needing to do this, as I did for a recent show, there isn’t a whole lot of other information out there on the topic. I hope you find this interesting if not useful in your own work, and please let me know if this helps with a project of yours.

Here I am using Blender 2.6 but everything should work with any older or new version, as there isn’t anything version specific. The concepts should also transfer to other 3D software like 3dsMax or Cinema4D as well.

Here’s the.blend file if you’d like to follow along.

Continue reading »]]> September 26-30 was a crazy week! Glitch Lich teamed up with saxophonist Michael Straus for four nights of awesome performances. I thought I’d share some of what we did.

Wednesday 9/28 Michael and I performed my new piece Lattice on CU’s Pendulum new Music:

As part of Friday’s University of Northern Colorado show, I performed an iPad solo using Rob Fielding’s Geo instrument:
Difference Tones by coledingraham

It was a blast and I hope we wil all get a chance to work together again sometime in the future. Meanwhile, my huge surround video show is fast approaching so I’m working non-stop on that now. More on that soon.

Continue reading »]]> During my time at Mills College I had the privilege to study Javanese Gamelan with Daniel Schmidt: an amazing teacher and composer most famous for being one of the first people to bring Gamelan to the west. Additionally, Mills houses the Gamelan that Lou Harrison built while teaching there. Daniel, in addition to his aforementioned talents, also is a fantastic instrument builder and has been making Gamelans himself for much of his career. This crazy convergence of factors ultimately guided me to instrument building myself.

I wrote a piece my last year at Mills which involved four pitches from the Lou Harrison Bonang among other things. Since I wanted to be able to perform the piece in the future I, with plenty of input from Daniel, made a replica of these notes. This was enough for me at the time but over this past summer I began having ideas for new works which would require more pitches. So while I was visiting my family in California (my dad basically has a machine shop in his garage) I went to work and ended up with this.

The Overtone Bonang, so named because the plates are tuned to various partials of different overtone series’, is a prototype for a larger set of instruments I am thinking of making (time and money allowing). Each pitch is a tuned aluminum disk suspended vertically on a two row rack. Traditionally the Bonang is a set of small gongs (upside down pots) on a stand laying flat on the ground. The choice to make these stand up was due to some issues I had, specifically with the larger disks, where if there was anything too close to the back when you play them it deadens the sound considerably. There are still plenty of kinks to be worked out (mainly silencing the rocking sound of the suspension lines against the disks) but it works quite well so far.

I currently have two sets: one consisting of partials 8-16 of one series and the other 8-16 starting from 9 of the opposite one. They could be played by multiple people but currently I am working on pieces where I play both at once in the “V” shape shown in the picture. Though I made everything this summer, I wasn’t able to assemble the entire set until now: mainly because I had left the original four pitches in Colorado when I made the rest. The first performance I will be giving on this will be later this month at Pendulum New Music so if you are around and interested come on by!

Continue reading »]]>

Today is day one of our week long tour! Michael Straus and Glitch Lich (formerly Lag) will be playing a number of shows in Colorado over the next few days:

- Monday 9/26: Denver University, Lamont School of Music Hamilton Hall @ 7:30pm
- Wednesday 9/28: CU Boulder’s Pendulum New Music @ 7:30pm
- Thursday 9/29: CU Boulder Imig Music Building room C199 @ 7:30pm
- Friday 9/30: University of Northern Colorado Keller Hall Milne Auditorium @ 7:30pm

We are all totally excited! In addition to being able to play a bunch of awesome shows, we are using this as a preview for some things we will submit to the 2012 SuperCollider Symposium in London. If you are in the area, come and see some killer new music!