Mr. Speaker

What a malfunctioning hot-air-balloon ride 2008 has been, hey? From those crazy early days - when it was well known that everyone who knew what “start-up” meant would be rich by October, to the entertaining later months: “Will pitch stupid internet ideas for food”. Who knows - perhaps this downturn will finally weed out those in the industry who are only here because they thought they could make more money than being administrative assistants for law firms (I’m talking to you, “New Media Community Managers”).

Read on for more »

Easter has come early ’round these parts - a brand new chocolate egg of audio treats for you - from me. Well actually, us this time: Mr Speaker has joined forces with the magical man of musical mgoodness - Tom Birchnell - to form Computadors.

Our first mission, which we chose to accept, was to remix kick-arse rock’n'rollers The Great Apes. Not just any tune, but the weirdly time-signed monster: Don’t Get It. Our version, Don’t Get It Remixed, is a confusing mash of dub, chip-tune, and hammond organ - with some filthy analog bass, and some chocolate Dr. Beat sprinkles for good measure.

As part of The Great Freepression that is sweeping the globe, you can listen to it and download it for just the cost of your bandwidth at Last.FM: Computadors VS Great Apes: Don’t Get It Remixed

This will be a post of three parts.

You should probably go straight to Part Three - as this has the juicy details, and a fairly brilliant song I composed. Part one and two are mostly content-free, self-oriented pieces that are sure to be of interest to few (though, with the high demand for fairly much anything to read on the internet these days, who knows...).

I'm committing them to Google for prosperity, in the knowledge that I may read it in a year or two and smile - thinking to myself "I must have known I'd read this again in a year or two and smile". Howdy Mr Speaker 2010... hows tricks? Did you end up taking care of that "issue"? I hope so!

Anywayz, this story (all of it true, much of it parenthesised) is based around WävRüta - a 2 channel, super lo-fi, 8 bit, microprocessor-powered, digital effects monster that sounds a little somethin' like this...

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It seems like less of a good idea now. It's 8.30am in tent on a football oval, 6km from Dorkbot Central. I sport a chipper hangover, compounded by a brawny and ominous (though, thankfully fairly rain-free) thunderstorm. Emerging from the tent, I spy my mode-of-transport with a small slice of contempt.

I quite like my pushbike, but let's recap: 8.30 am. Thunderstorm. Hangover. 6 kilometres. By bike.

These obstacles fail to dissuade me - a journey of 6 thousand metres begins with a single pedal. About 100 pedals in, however, events take a economic-crisis-bar-chart-like turn.

After such an epic journey, it was going to have to be a pretty impressive 8bit, lo-fi, noisy, multi-mode digital audio FX unit and signal generator we'd be building. And with such a description, how could it not be? Impressive, that is.

It couldn't not be, that's the answer to that rhetorical question - and as promised way back in part I (or part one, for non-romans) - Here be a track demonstrating some of the effects capable from WävRüta:

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(Community-based collaboration from Happy Chef, and the Javascript Kids on the Block. Don't know if it'll win the t-shirt remix comp though...)