Esem / Eesn / G. Marinov

BBC Philharmonic + Nero

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 12:14:00 +0200

So many things to be said about this video, I don't know where to begin. There's a lot of background to the fact that it's done by BBC 1Xtra (sister station to BBC Radio 1; "provides music output 24 hours a day") - a subsidiary of the state-owned (and state-funded) BBC.

I find a hint of everything in here, not just the music: For near 18 minutes you can see very much official recognition (not the first) of a relatively new genre by an institution as huge as the Beeb. Also a clear link between things current and legacy (Brits excel at this). A fantastic promotional move for Nero. Recognition of talent - Nero were nominees for BBC's "Sound of 2011". Spending public money on something impressive and very beautiful - Radio 1 commissioned this to kick off Dubstep Week and obviously knew what they were doing. Great orchestration by Joe Duddell - a man with great passion for both classical and alternative music. A fun fest for a full orchestra. Apple computers next to age-old violins and brass. Dubstep eclipsed by the richness of the acoustic. Orchestral music overpowered by electronics. The difficulty in achieving a bond between popular music and the far more demanding orchestral score. Also that it takes a pretty decent number of talented people to make something as impressive (trust me no musician happened to be there by chance). Finally, it's not exactly bursting with live audience. Tells you something about the nature of the live performance (especially one that isn't by an act that's been around for 10+ years), and how daring this was.

If I was impressed by Jeff Mills and the Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra at Pont du Gard, but couldn't be bothered to ever put it on again, this one is far deeper, and it's playing in entirety for the third time as I write. If Mills felt big enough to sit at the front right, Nero sit at the back. I am equally interested in the technicalities of putting this act together, as the sync must have been a challenge (computers can't see the conductor..).

Very beautiful.

mtftar on osx 10.6 snow leopard

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 10:48:00 +0200

I tend to keep files for an eternity and some of them go way back to no longer supported formats, or different operating systems altogether. This short post is about opening Windows Backup .bkf files on OSX Snow Leopard.

I did end up with a 20GB .bkf file that I could not open on my Mac so after some googling, I found mtftar. It's a nifty little utility to translate .bkf files to the tape archiver format (tar). Trouble is, it did not compile on OSX. But an hour later, after sourcing various files from here and there, and making little tweaks for 10.6, I have what looks like an 64 bit intel command line binary for OSX Snow Leopard. In the spirit of the intertubes, I offer my copy to those in need. It includes a precompiled binary and source files.

The disclaimer:
I am not affiliated with neither the original mtf author, nor the one behind mtftar. I cannot and will not offer any support for this. It will very likely not work on OSX 10.5 and older. It will most likely not run on OSX 10.7. It does not work on PowerPC. Probably not necessary, but you may need the developer tools installed.

Got that above? Download: mtftar.osx.10.6.zip

Copying from the readme:
mtftar is most often used as a filter, as in:
mtftar < MyBackup.bkf | tar xvf -

p.s. I originally got mtftar from here.

The future by Airbus

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 13:55:00 +0200

I had the great pleasure of working with Clay Interactive on an iOS app for Airbus, providing UI sounds, and also supplying the background music track (adapted from an earlier version on my SoundCloud page). Follow this link to download the free app for iPhone or iPad.

Alternatively, you can watch the presentation video without the UI sounds on YouTube.

Interlude

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:09:00 +0200

...

rare documentary on John Williams

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:02:00 +0200

Nowadays it has become very common for a modern film to have a 'sound for film' profile. You can find lots of them here. But it's not very common that you find a documentary recorded way back when, and one that features sonic giants such as John Williams and Ben Burtt in their younger years, showing the origins of modern day sound design for moving image.

Here's a stunning documentary about John Williams (I don't need to say how I feel about his music). It was published in the 80s.
A rare find in six parts, here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Credits go to Miguel Isaza of Designing Sound.

live @ tpolm lazy sunday

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 01:56:00 +0200

Listen and comment on SoundCloud.

Also a word of thanks to my patrons. I am having to replace some of my equipment and am breaking the piggy bank. You can donate too, if you wish.

Sutemos Intelligent Toys 6

Mon, 03 May 2010 16:41:00 +0200

This was long in the making, but I am happy that it finally saw the light of day. 6th in the Intelligent Toys series, this 3CD compilation features the work of artists such as Jimmy Edgar, Michael Fakesch, Maps and Diagrams, and Jan Jelinek.

Also on the second CD you will find an Esem track called "Ssyeru".

There are also FLAC versions of all tracks on the Sutemos site. But the ones among you who have surround setups might be interested in the 5.1 surround mix (available in .mov in ITU channel order L R C LFE Ls Rs, and .ac3 though that might have its channel order tagged wrong. ). Drop me an email.

Grab the compilation from here.

live 25/4

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:16:00 +0200

Live internet stream: TPOLM Lazy Sunday Video organised by Jaakko Manninen and Antti J?dertpolm.

Sunday, 25th April 7010
Event starts at noon GMT
Esem 1 hour set : 7pm GMT = 8pm CET = 9pm EET

More details TBA.

silence vs noise

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:43:00 +0200

Silence is great. While studying (Sound Design) at Ravensbourne I've started paying more attention to it not only because it's quite impossible to find, but also because in our day and age, it comes loaded with so much meaning.

Wikipedia has a great article on silence but the original reason I began writing this post was a Newsweek article about Gordon Hempton, a nature recordist who has recently focused on silence. Hempton's work on 'endangered' silence links nicely with Chris Watson's recent programme 'A Problem with Noise' about how man-made noise changes not only the environment but also its inhabitants. The links at the bottom of the BBC page are interesting too. As a glue inbetween all of this, there's the excellent 'Soundscape - the tuning of the world' by R. Murray Schaffer.

I find it amazing when I can have a quiet moment. These have become increasingly rare.

happy new year

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:07:00 +0200

s2 c3a t1a by eesn

music is a service, not a product (!?)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:51:00 +0200

i saw the above said on a Metafilter discussion here.

Case in question being Lily Allen's blog entry on Myspace, where she goes on about things painfully known to the entire community. As any discussion on piracy it has quickly grown into a long thread in which one can see interesting points such as "the core of the music business was a high cost of entry to record and distribute music, not the inherent value of the music itself".

(thanks for valuing music as such...)

Now, I don't know whether any of those are true. For all I care, I've resolved not to take part in discussions on piracy. But I'll mention one thing that has become apparent to me: In order to create, an artist must free their mind from everyday distractions, the biggest of which is finance. In simple terms: it works better if you don't have to worry about food.

Oh, and one more thing, regarding "anti"-measures. Read my lips: they don't work.

spiderboatfishermanloudspeakerflash

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:35:00 +0200

Not doing the above image justice at this size, so go and look at it in all its glory (click and then click). It was done by Luke Mancini from Australia.

I am going to be frank about two things. 1. I am honoured and flattered. 2. Scateren suffers from being perceived as a "free" album, which it totally is, but you know what I'm talking about, that it's perceived as worth its price.. Glad it inspired an artist.

Plus, it hypes me up to see that music (especially mine) is not as disposable as I thought. I mean, come on, it is from 2005! That's ages ago, right?

Word of thanks to the man.

how hard can we try?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:19:00 +0200

When does sound become music?

Someone recently asked this on a Fwonk board. It made me think about something I take for granted half the time, and have mixed feelings about during the other half. I'll give you my take, but first I wanted to select a couple of quotes.

"I think musicians need to strap on a pair of down-to-earth man-balls for a week or so and fix the leaky sink of indefinition of what it is they actually do: "

"To me it seems like you want there to be truths in language. Like you want the ideal to be that a word has an exact, constant meaning that everyone agrees upon. To me it's more interesting to see the language itself as an abstraction which can and should be interpreted in many different ways. "

"I don't like songs. Music is just organised noise, and noise is poison to the mind."

This is amazing. At the time of writing nobody has mentioned emotion. Before touching on that, I'm thinking if traditional cures are poisonous in large quantities, and if say most cures are small quantities of poison, then how about a bit of organised noise, indeed?

I want to throw a couple of words in the equation. They are: harmony, rhythm, arrangement, and emotion. All four are in the broadest sense possible.

So how hard are we trying to define everything around us and decimate something as big as music into words? Possibly if words could describe music, the latter wouldn't exist. But on the topic: when does sound become music? Here goes:

Sound becomes music the moment there's a touch of all four to it: harmony, rhythm, arrangement, and emotion. I said I talk about the broadest sense of these so imagine all the different levels on which harmony can happen. Within the spectrum. Within a single sound. Between sounds. Between the source and its environment. Now do the same for rhythm. Now think of arrangement. Now think any of all three existing in, and affecting, the others.

I find it a tad difficult already. Throw context on top of it (I'd argue all modern art builds on context, which is hilarious). My head hurts.

Give me a sound that has a touch of all three, and evokes emotion in me, or expresses somebody else's emotion in a way I can interpret. Manmade or not, I'd call it music any day. What do you hear?

honourable mentions

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:20:00 +0200

A word of thanks from my heart to these few people:

Dave Monk
Peter Peulicke
Martin Mavrov
Jacob Newman

They're big. They are my patrons. So are all the others in the list here. I've mentioned this, but I've moved back to being a UK student, and, amidst the crisis, it's a very tough period. On the other hand, I'm up to my neck in sound :)

♥ Thank you.

The Creative Cost of Piracy

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:56:00 +0200

I don't like piracy. It's a dangerous topic. You can't take sides. There's no way to win the argument, either side. I liken it to talking about religion. Lots of things can go wrong, really fast. But this I never saw coming. Over at The Music of Sound, there's a fantastic post, commenting on a recent interview with Julian Smirke who edited Star Trek (2009).

I've recently seen enough incomplete reels with double, even triple timecodes and lots of other text imposed over the images, which itself have plenty of temp effects, green screens and so on. It's not pretty. Why anyone would leak anything like that is beyond me.

So the studios will have the creative professionals on their side, but the punishment for the creatives is ever so sly. Blame (other) pirates for the leaks that, possibly, originated from your post-production house? If anyone ever told that to my face (pun intended) via picture, first urge I'd get is to respond back.

Can you do sound to black and white images? Possibly. But surely you'd be missing out on some finer nuances. And I thought in large piracy is encouraged by products, (not copies,) of mediocre quality?

soundwalkers

Wed, 06 May 2009 01:57:00 +0200

Here's one thing I like about Soundwalkers by Raquel Castro: Much of it is in a foreign language, so as you are forced to read the subtitles, you can listen to the musicality of the language. Of course none of this tells you about the actual film, but that's not the point ;)

In the words of the author: "There are some fundamental principles regarding the construction of an acoustically healthy society, one where we can exist within the sounds of life. Respect towards voice and words, sonic awareness, the awakening of the sense of hearing. To preserve the sounds that tend to fade out, while remaining open to the sounds that spring out of each technological stride. To build an aural idiom that interprets its own symbolism. To accept the silence, enforcing it in the due moments. And, above all else, to listen."

Slumdog Millionaire OST is loud

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:12:00 +0200

It takes a certain amount of dark art knowledge to make a record this hot, and 'Ringa Ringa' from Slumdog Millionaire takes the cake for being the first track I hear better when played quieter, not louder. Hear it at Last.fm.

I put it through the meters, just for fun. All scales (including the VUs) are calibrated for broadcast (just 12dB dynamics), i.e. louder than recommended. Sound needs to be pretty loud to register as yellow on the black meter, and if it registers as red, it is most likely clipping. It's not a digital peak meter, but you can see the digital peaks and overloads at the far right, even though all faders are at 0. The needles are trying to go to +5 at this moment. It is louder than loud.

I don't care how loud a record is, if it sounds good to my ears. But as I said above, it takes either special knowledge or special equipment (or both) to go this far. My problem is, as this has become the de-facto standard for mixing, I need to set an extra day aside on everything I work on, just for squeezing this last dB or two of level. It is tedious and hurts my creativity. I feel for anyone doing this for a living. It hurts my ears.

Brilliant film though.

WTF is a Sound Designer??

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:11:00 +0200

I've been trying to explain to various people I meet, that sound design is about decisions, not about tech/gear or a specific aspect of sound (say effects, or music). Apparently a much, much more established person, one Randy Thom, says this:

The 'sexy' term Sound Design caught on in the movie biz, but with a very different and unfortunately much narrower meaning. Somehow Sound Design in film came to be associated exclusively with things 'high tech,' with using 24track tape recorders and midi in the early days, and a little later plug-ins.

Which isn't right.. "In my view, the word design applies to all the creative work we do in sound." says Randy Thom, and this is exactly what gets difficult to explain. Sound Designer, being a relatively new (and fancy) term, has been assigned little meaning, and seems to be associated with geekness and trickery.. And apparently in the US, calling yourself a 'sound designer' can be a no-no.. and film sound designers can't get into early credits because they are 'technicians'.

Hopefully the industry will decide on what to call the people who make the important decisions that shape sound as a whole (and are not just editors). Until then, just think it has nothing to do with gadgets.

2008/2009

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 19:51:00 +0200

Happy Christmas (if you celebrate it).

I owe you a few news then. First, if you haven't been following the Esem group on Facebook, I have moved to the UK again, and currently study Sound Design at Ravensbourne College in London.

LP3, LP4, FR2, or whatever it is called nowadays: I take it you've noticed that my public musical output has slowed down almost to a halt. Projects I was working on in 2008 had a drastic impact on everything I release, so the successor to Serial Human is, once again, delayed. Raw scoop - grab and run.

The one thing that did go well and according to plan was a collaboration with a cool 3D company in London, called Smoothe. An MTV+Me ident we did together was shortlisted for worldwide broadcasting. Click here to see it.

Know Processing? I am looking for a Processing artist with some free time on their hands. If you are one, please get in touch.

The site feeds, always confusing, here is the one-line guide: all posts in English, all quick thoughts, my uni feed in Bulgarian.

Lined up for 2009: Enveloped remaster (this is nearly complete), Ikae remaster (half complete) - both free downloads. And LP4.

Here's to a better year for everyone.

serial human on itunes

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:23:00 +0200

I don't expect you to buy MP3s these days, but if you do, here's a handy link to Serial Human on iTunes. I actually get a cut of that. Erm, maybe I don't.