Sonic Vigil 8 - Out In The Field

Announcing my next performance!

Sonic Vigil is a festival of improvised music, sound art, and video that takes place every year in the wonderful city of Cork. For Sonic Vigil 8, the festival is extending its reach into 3 days of activities, from 2-4 May 2014. The main event is Saturday from 2 to 8pm in St. Anne's Church, Shandon. It's easy to find, since the steeple is the famous tower with a clock on each face, visible from all over the city.

The format is amazing... musicians will be selected at random with a Max patch, and will then create an ad hoc performance with whoever else pops up on the computer screen.

Reaktor reaches end of life?

I have been a big fan of Reaktor for some time, and use it exclusively in my live work. Recently I have encountered some absolute stupidity on the part of its developer Native Instruments. And this is forcing me to rethink my commitment.

I started with Reaktor back in version 3 and have been hacking away steadily for 15 years. It's a fantastic system for developing your own instruments, effects, and audio utilities. One does this either by hacking together pieces from existing tools or simply building virtual circuits from scratch in a graphical interface. It's a lot like Max/MSP except easier to get started, and with thousands of ready-to-go ensembles, many of excellent quality. Back when I started all this, Max had a poor interface and provided no way to customise the look and feel for performance. Also I didn't like the sound. Both of these factors are no longer the case, but still Reaktor has the edge in some departments. (For one, it works as a VST so it is easy to integrate with any DAW.)