All the Dub Collision mixes available here have been represented on Tumblr as “pointer posts;” posts which point back here.

dubcollision.tumblr is geared to promote my mixes/podcasts in a new venue. This minor effort led to a big spike in traffic. Yippee.

Meanwhile, on the Kamelmauz front, or, maybe better on the ‘fronting Kamelmauz’ tip, I set up a new Kamelmauz web site at upstart Nogeno. More than similar to Bandcamp, the web aggregator for musicians can pull in Bandcamp embeds. Bandcamp probably is not keen on such upstarts grabbing embedding source code, yet it affords me another experiment in leveraging free web venues. I haven’t spend anytime actually figuring out how to leverage Nogeno, (on the other hand!)

The new ‘subsidiary site’ does allow a nice format to present Chuck Mintz‘s photograph of Stephen aka Kamelmauz, taken last year as part of his Precious Objects Series. The photo expresses my relationship to pedal steel guitar: vertical!

The big surprise was Nogeno, in importing releases from Bandcamp, mangled the order for each release, and, at the same time, assembled an oddly representative selection on the Kamelmauz front page. Weirdness, yet, also delightful.

Kamelmauz is on Google+ too; this, allowing for video uploads. For example, I just poked Quark into the mix there. Once I get a smartphone, all the efforts will be revamped. Shameless self-promo request: always hoping for LIKES and PLUSSES and LINKS.

To reprise my musical outposts, other than this blog:

1. Kamelmauz/Bandcamp/Releases – full, free release of my experimental music at Bandcamp
2. Kamelmauz/Bandcamp/Sounds – free releases of individual tracks; current demos, works-in-progress
3. Kamelmauz/Nogeno – full releases, poached from Bandcamp
4. Kamelmauz/Facebook – fan page
5. Kamelmauz/Twitter
6. Kamelmauz/Google+
7. Dub Collision/Tumblr – pointers back to posts on this blog
8. Kamelmauz/Myspace – screw myspace
and:

9. Rhythm River/web site – imaginal musicology; transformational learning as a listening proposition

LEARNING BY LISTENING

Both THE RIVER and PENTATONIC DRIFT, each consisting of three stand-alone programs, are focused on particpant’s experiential and imaginal journey of musical discovery. The experiential learning is centered on listening to an evocative sound world. Each Rhythm River program begins in various ancestral musical cultures, cultures found on every continent and active to this day. The modern traces of those ancestral sound worlds constitute the other music heard in these programs.

These sounds also provide the context for imagining how they came to be transmitted between tribes, across continents, and over oceans, and, in deep listening, further evoking something of the order of sonic and soulful archetypes. The channels of musical transmission constitute the raw materials, and the awareness of the listener plays their experience as if it is an instrument.

For my iconoclastic sound designer’s esoteric purposes, a pedal steel guitar is a platform and not a hideously complex testbed for figuring out how to manipulate a prolific set of changes.

The basic operation is simple: pedals allow the player to change the tuning of a string in the midst of, or right before, or after, or during a movement of the bar from fret to fret.

Here, the great player and friend of the pedal steel Mickey Adams, offers beginner’s lesson that shows in two minutes what I’m describing.

He’s using a modern two 10-string neck pedal steel guitar, and, likely the total number of tuning changes on the E-9th neck, the so-called country and western neck, numbers at least fourteen. My guess is the number is very roughly the number of pedals, three on the floor and four on the knees, times two.

My two Fender 400′s are antiques and the string changes are driven by a dependable, slow-responding, archaic mechanism consisting of four cables attached to four pedals. Leo Fender and his team figured this particular mechanism out sometime in the mid-fifties. Although it remained the mechanism underneath Fender steels until 1974, it was mechanically obsolete by around 1960.

Two changes per cable allow me eight changes in all. Unlike modern pedal steel guitars, I can change the overall tuning in fifteen minutes, rather than in an hour or more. This has made me, for lack of a better term, ‘a tuning slut.’

This month I decided to normalize my tunings. This means deciding once and for all to keep the poor man’s E9 on one guitar, and do a modified B6th on the other. (B6th was the tuning my favorite steel master, Sneaky Pete Klienow utilized, also on a Fender 8-string guitar.)

Eight changes isn’t enough to support full modern tunings, yet, after some consulting with the helpful crew on the Fender Steel Forum, I made some decisions, and now am all over this:

Note-KL means Knee Levers; this lever isn't on the guitar, yet

I look at my tunings as a sixteen-string guitar. In this way the intervals, irrespective of the key, may be analyzed at every fret. For example, the A pedal on the B6th is used to get a Major chord at every fret. A big chunk of any scale is hidden in this ‘sixteen string’ way of looking at a tuning. The B6th is very close to the E9th, with the same suspended chords, as-it-were, right under foot.

Experimental tunings now move over to two of the lap steels.

1.Watching My Thoughts Flow By 3:36
2.Accomplice 4:35

Over Suite (Dedication: Roger McGuinn)
3.Come Over 2:12
4.And Over 2:15

5.Pas plus monsieur gentil 4:34
6.Aspirational 11:06

7.Sarte 3:57
(Dedication: Susan Alcorn)

Two Street Odes
8.Front and Back Side 4:57
9.Poor City 9:58

10.Transient-Waves 5:22
11.Kor-do-fi 1:50
12.Tributary 14:59
13.Might Have, Nice to Have 1:46
14.Silicat 5:37
(Dedication: Terry Riley)

Early last year, I (ne:Kamelmauz) was surveying the leftover scraps from the recordings for Slidemare. By survey, I mean gazing at folders on the computer full of audio files. These added up to about 100 hours of forlorn stuff. With the virtual broom in hand I was just about ready to sweep them away, when I made the decision to listen to several, and soon enough I was reorganizing the files so I could audition them in an orderly way. Why? It occurred to me in a flash that some might lend themselves to being re-purposed and renewed, by experimenting with different ways to recombine the scraps into new compositions and sound designs. One thing led to another, and so I started to cull the best of the scraps, build new effects chains and synthesizer patches with which to manipulate the source audio, and, soon enough, threw myself into a new project, what I came to term, studio outtakes 2005-2010. The actual guitar recordings mostly date from 2007 to 2009, yet, this turned out to be a very deep sound design project.

Originally, I had hoped to do this quickly and do this even in a somewhat cavalier way, and then get on with some other project. This was not to be. By October, having boiled the stock of usable audio down to ten hours worth, I went into full-on mad scientist mode. Poor City, and the EP, Sleeper are the result. Somewhat ironically, the latter is comprised of rejects from the finished pieces, themselves scavenged from the post-Slidemare detritus.

My goal is always to enjoy the process of music making and sound designing. This turned out to be a blast, except for the mastering. Mastering is a grind. Hopefully there is a correlation between my enjoyment and that of the listener. We’ll see.

Note for the listener. First of all, you can audition the entire recording at Bandcamp, home of the best sounding 128kbs mp3′s on the planet. Poor City can be downloaded for free in its entirety in high quality mp3, or, if one is an adept, in flac. The flac format can almost always be played by this same adept on their computer, or, best option of all, turned into wave files and burned to a CD. The premium listening experience is only accessible on a good home stereo or on a good car stereo.

If I had a magic wand, the attentive and daring listener would go to the trouble of listening to Poor City on CD through one of those old fashioned, what used to be called, hi-fi systems. The reason is simple: the source–steel guitars–was analog, the process involved in assembly, mixing, and mastering was fastidious, and, this is a very detailed recording with a heavy low-end. I can’t guarantee going to all this trouble offers a surefire “experiential” reward on the other end, yet, the full intended import is only available from hearing the highest fidelity. Ear buds and headphones are not recommended technology for this record.

FREE: obtain Poor City from Bandcamp.

Sleeper is also free. The meta-genre being worked through here represent different combinations of: experimental, minimalist, dark ambient, industrial, noise, drone, psychedelic, cinematic, avant-steel guitar. There is even one heavy metal instrumental for the attic people.

1 Beaver & Kraus::Nine moons in alaska 3:08
2 Terry Riley::The Ethereal Time Shadow (Excerpt) 8:52
3 Coil::Dark River 6:29
4 Wendy Carlos::Winter [Out Take] 5:23
5 Pauline Oliveros & Reynols::We Are Still Thinking About The Title… 2:30
6 Susan Alcorn::Heart Sutra 4:32
7 Zoviet France::Degen 2:49
8 Thomas Koner::Nuuk (night) 4:12
9 Paul Schutze::The Falls 3:02
10 Lights In a Fat City::Dolphin Dreaming 4:24
11 Nadja::You Are as Dust 10:09
12 Robert Rich::Passing Terrain 6:09
13 Sunn0)))::Grease Fire 2:25

This mix anticipates the release of the new sound world by Kamelmauz, Poor City, on Tuesday. Intended here is a partial catalog of precedents and influences for Kamelmauz’s sound designs, running back over forty years.

Shadow Sutra | Mp3@320kbs | Rapidshare

No stream, but, for similar moods, the new Kamelmauz EP, Sleeper is a free download at bandcamp. And, heck, here’s the sharity embed.

Sleeper contains four tracks that couldn’t be fit to the 70 minute compact disc maximum. This is ironic because the Bandcamp downloads are digital, so the only way anyone could receive a CD without any hassle would be to ask me, nicely.Everything from Duty Free, including the entire opus so far of Kamelmauz, (In Khorasan, Slidemare, Sleeper, and the new Poor City, are free baby free.

Akai LPD-8

Back on the pentatonic trip: here’s two very down-and-dirty versions of pentatonic riffing that use some patches from Native Instrument’s Reaktor-Prism synthesizer module. (Upgrade to NI Komplete version 7, and Prism is included as one of the numerous new modules.) The pentatonic, characterized as the ‘black keys’ on a piano, is elsewhere on the keyboard too, obviously. I think of it not as a five or six note mode, but as an extended two or three octave scale; in C: C, D, E, G, A, C, D, E, G, A, C

For these short sketches, the Akai pad controller adds in the E and the A. I did run some effects on this unmastered and roughly mixed set of sketches. The versions represent different mixes.

Aound, versions I & II

Tip for viewing: the work is 21 minutes long. If you have a nice multi-media set-up this benefits from being toggled to full screen–the toggle is to the left of the audio level slider.

I made an HD DVD version and it looks glorious. This obviously is Flash pumped to the max.

Thanks to Leonardo Solaas. He programmed the online interactive-at-initiation art generator, Dreamlines. All the visuals are due to the artistry implicit in his visionary programming and how the program mixes in real-time images taken from the web.

If you manage to sit through the entire experiment, you’ll learn the keywords I used at the end.

Meanwhile, the dark ambient soundtrack uses an outtake of mine, Aspirational Slim Case.

Slidemare (2009)

I’ve posted the entirety of the new Kamelmauz dream, Slidemare. Each track can be auditioned, and, for the ambitious who know their way around iTunes, the recording may be downloaded as Apple-lossless files, burned onto a CD and listened to on one of those antique stereo systems–highly recommended. Not recommended: ear buds.

Slidemare isn’t intended to please any audience; in fact, it’s intended to please just me. All outside sympathy or antipathy, attraction or repulsion, are frosting. The genre is: experimental strange ambient, so my latest soundplay cannot be a common cup o’ tea.

Half a dozen tracks didn’t make the cut, and half of those simply need to be completed; in due time. Here’s one that didn’t make the cut:

KAMELMAUZ-Under the Forest

I didn’t document my workflow, so about all that can be said is that Slidemare was lashed together from three years of on and off experimenting. I don’t do much post-processing. The delays and the what-not are almost always part of the live recording chain. The assembly of individual tracks is a matter of review, pulling each apart, flinging them like darts onto the track mixer, moving clips around, and, ending the process far short of obsession or perfectionism. As always from beginning to the end the process is: naive, intuitive, painterly, and a heck of a lot of fun.

listen | download: Kamelmauz-Slidemare

Maybe/hoping, by Sunday, I’ll post mp3′s and downloadable Apple lossless tracks from my completed recording, Slidemare. (Tonight I’ve posted the track list and credits, and will post track notes with the tracks.) To build up to this, I’m going to provide context by exemplifying the most important influences for my first new recording in 8 years. There are four tracks that didn’t make the cut, so I’ll post at least two of those, too.

These masterful influences also provide a portent of the kinds of sound worlds I design in a painterly way. The genre conventions I have one foot in are several: drones, dark ambient, and, noise. My play-in-sound is intended only to please me, so, tis not likely to be universally palatable! My music, for the daring listener, hopefully warrants excursions through its strange sonic worlds.

I’ll present examples in the order the various exemplars flowed into my own sound field. First up, Pauline Oliveros. She’s, firstly, a genius in many dimensions–as composer and instrumentalist, as educator, as philosopher, and as inspiratrix. It is enough to say that her Deep Listening Band provided a startling initiation when I first heard their self-titled recording on New Albion almost twenty years ago. Her deep listening philosophy has been very influential for my sense of the total experience of sound.

What is Deep Listening?
Deep Listening® is a philosophy and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros that distinguishes the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening. The result of the practice cultivates appreciation of sounds on a heightened level, expanding the potential for connection and interaction with one’s environment, technology and performance with others in music and related arts. (src=deeplistening.org

An interesting report about Deep listening from a sensitive neophyte:

Yet, given that the goal is to make naive Kamelmauz-style hed music sooner rather than later, I searched through the haystack of tuning threads on the forum. There are but two schools of thought on 8 string pedal steel tunings. Either you do an impoverished E9, loosing the chromatic strings, or go for a variant on Sneaky Pete’s B6th. The Sneaky B6th is basically a universal-type tuning. Except, Sneaky worked with 9 pedals and 2 knees!

Then I came across an E Major tuning. It’s either a Bobby Lee (bOb) by way of Dave Dogett, or visa versa, tuning. It’s very much like the standard Open E on two of my lap steels.

Next, I approximated part of the standard E9th using the familiar E9 pedal set up. Basically, this Open E tuning strips the F# strings out of the E9th tuning. Called by bOb the E Power tuning, and used by nobody except naive pikers set up in the room off the kitchen–probably–the tuning is very neat. It’s all major chord grips with the pedals used to snatch some country-ish licks, and, lo and behold, snatch the pentatonics too.

Oh, I hung a G Pentatonic on the Rondo SX 6 string lappie.

I already own Absynth and Guitar Rig Pro.

In almost every way, Komplete presents a candy shop way too big for a dabbler like myself to really deal with in any comprehensive, or even grown up way. But, at the same time, the various tools are all there and especially Reaktor and Kontakt allow for all sorts of naive experiments.

For example, I’ve recorded some Krar (the Ethiopian string instrument,) samples and been playing them through both Kontakt and various Reaktor sample players. Likewise, I’m going to do the same with the didgeridoo and the lap and pedal steels. And, I jumped into some sample kits from the wizards atsonniccouture, Hang Drums, Skiddaw Stones, and the mini Gamelan set. The Skiddaw Stones story completely sold me.

Then I learn Native Instruments is updating Komplete October 1st. In effect, with the upgrade, I end up with the new version for the new, lower, regular price. Was I upset? Not at all. You see, NI is the bomb. I’ve been using Absynth for 9 years. The upgrades have all offered substantial enhancements. I know what to expect: better tools. And, Native Instruments is, in my estimation, the ‘Apple’ of the software audio world. Hmmm, this is even so considering I use Apple’s Logic Express too.

Also, I got the knee pedal attached and working on the 2nd Fender 400 pedal steel guitar. It plays wonderfully as much as I can be the judge of such things–well, it stays in tune fine. I’ve got some studio sketches I’ll poke up soon.