ben suthers

couple of photos of the beast.

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:12:09 +1100

couple of photos of the beast.

Stick Blog #2

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 08:59:00 +1100

Stick Blog #2

Well, after a little more practice, I have stumbled into the thinking that levin does use ascending 5ths through the bass strings; and that by spacing his left and right hands a minor 3rd apart over two strings, with the third finger of each hand on the tonic, the leading note minor pentatonic form of many modern bass riffs becomes easily accessible and percussive.

Secondary leading and chromatic passing notes fall to the second finger, and you have the added advantage of being able to double stop 5,10 in the left hand for the other part of that classic stick bass style.

The one handed bass +chords accompaniment style is more rhythmic and accurate than it is on the piano, and the harmonic richness allows you to voice 7, 10 and leave out the 5th in a voicing that is part guitar, part piano and reminiscent of Bill Evans. Beautiful, wide framing.

So, with that in mind i have detuned the melody strings from classic to matched reciprocal (so the 10 strings are C,G,D,A,E,C,G,D,A,E, and will keep working on the left hand before confusing my brain with the chord framings for the right, which emmetts book suggests are geometrically the same, for different inversions of the same chord; but then i don’t think very visually so……

Stick Blog #1

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 10:50:18 +1100

Stick Blog #1

Well, I’ve been playing the stick for a week, and have probably clocked up about 3 hours in total. It’s a graphite (with no sounding body, who needs wood?) 10 string tuned in the classic tuning, with fret rails, flaps, and the amazing sounding PASV4 Villex passive pickup matrix.

It’s a fascinating instrument, not for any of the obvious reasons.

First of all, yes, it can do all those sticky bass sounds that tony levin made popular, and with the appropriate little phaser pedal (MXR 90) and a bunch of opto compression ‘i don’t remember’ or ‘hells half acre’ come stomping out with little trouble and ease; Big Time is great fun, and the solo from one slip is just a tube compressor and a svt model away;
as long as you retune your bass strings to ascending 4ths.

What did you say? You mean its standard tuning isn’t 4ths? Yes. The classic and matched reciprocal tunings call for ascending 5ths in the bass…because that’s what the stick is actually about. Its a system for exploring polyphony and voicing. Everything Emmett has created is geared towards a key neutral instrument with the same fingering patterns across both dimensions of the fretboard. It’s perfectly natural on the stick to play parallel 10ths, and it sounds spacious and beautiful and creates no discomfort. Emmetts method calls for ascending 5ths in the bass strings rather than 4ths, and this means that it becomes easier to finger a 10th than a 3rd, and a +13 or 11 is reachable. Actually, voicing across 2 octaves become a cinch; just don’t try and play a walking or funk bassline without changing hand positions because you can’t….instead it’s crying out for arpeggios, chords and polyphonic left hand rhythms. Lucky I’m primarily a keyboard player.

I don’t know whether Tony uses ascending 5ths or not; maybe thats why he plays 2 handed bass on the stick, but i suspect he tunes the bass strings in ascending 4ths when playing bass lines.

In any case, its great fun, sounds fantastic, tunes easily, and is very dynamic. I just wish i had more time….and yes I will post a video.

And in unrelated news, the hard drive on my laptop failed. I am determined that that will be the last spinning turntable of magnetic bits I purchase.

Photo

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:27:19 +1000

More Real Than Star Wars.....

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:59:54 +1000

More Real Than Star Wars.....:

50kw laser? UAV? flames?

Don't! Hold! It! Wrong!

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:54:18 +1000

Don't! Hold! It! Wrong!:

rofl. rofl. lolrofl.

i heart

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:45:25 +1000

I heart reading time magazine on the iPad. Reading wired on the iPad. Actually, I just simply heart reading magazines on the iPad. It’s made me buy magazines again. Thanks, apple.

(oh and the holiday was great - but I’ll blog about that after several 10’s of gigabytes of media uploads)

emergentfutures: smarterplanet: electricpower: Let’s Cover...

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:33:38 +1000

emergentfutures:

smarterplanet:

electricpower:

Let’s Cover The Moon in Solar Panels

Here’s an idea so crazy it might work: a solar plant on the Moon. Specifically, a 6,800 mile long solar belt that spans the Moon’s equator and sends energy back to Earth with lasers and microwave power.

Japanese firm Shimizu is calling their lunar solar power generation concept the Luna Ringand it’s brilliantly ambitious. The way the Luna Ring works is by gathering solar energy with a 6,800 mile long solar belt across the Moon’s equator that’ll be transmitted to Moon-based energy conversion facilities. The converted power will then be beamed to Earth-based facilities with laser power and microwave power. Once on Earth, we’ll be able turn all that power into electric power for our power grids or hydrogen fuel.

Robots will handle the lunar-side construction with most building materials coming from the moon. The benefit of having solar panels on the Moon is that it eliminates inefficiency due to bad weather and allows it to achieve 24/7 continuous power generation. Oh, and the fact that we’ll have a freaking power plant on the Moon sending lasers at the Earth isn’t anything to sneeze at either.

If this Luna Ring ever gets built it’ll join a growing number of robot Moon bases in the works. Which will obviously lead to Robot Revolution with all the robots banding together and hijacking the Moon—stealing all our power in the process.

[Shimizu via Inhabitat]

gizmodo

Ipad

Fri, 28 May 2010 22:59:10 +1000

After a day with an iPad, it seems to fit in @home just great. Personally, I don’t miss a thing…but then I was never a fan of printers, USB sticks or DVD drives….they just seem to generate useless work.

The Rock and Roll Mea Culpa

Mon, 10 May 2010 11:33:34 +1000

from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/10/2894562.htm?site=thedrum

by Marieke Hardy

My esteemed Drum colleague Michael Collett wrote a very nice piece last week regarding the trials and tribulations of punters attempting to buy tickets for music festival Splendour In The Grass. By his account, those hapless hand-wringers repeatedly pressing refresh on the Moshtix website were ‘unwitting subjects of some sick scientist’s experiment’, and left dangling slightly in cyberspace while the system appeared to collapse around their ears.

Organisers said they were ‘overwhelmed’ by the demand for tickets. Admittedly it must have come as a bit of a surprise to them considering the last four Splendours have sold out in a matter of hours and this year’s line-up features tedious nobodies like The Pixies, The Strokes and Paul Kelly.

“How odd,” they must have murmured to themselves in bewildered tones as the Moshtix computers sputtered and fizzed, shooting sparks skywards in the fashion of R2D2 suffering an epileptic fit.

“We didn’t think anybody would actually want to come.”

In the end, they politely apologised to those who may be otherwise inclined to march up and deliver a swift kick to the gonads on show day, and in doing so signed up to the latest fad in festival tradition: the rock ‘n’ roll mea culpa.

The rock ‘n’ roll apology is a fairly new phenomenon, though it is growing considerably in both popularity and regularity. Organisers of the Groovin’ The Moo festival in Bendigo (I don’t make up these names, I swear) recently issued a slavering apology to those who arrived at the May event ‘very early in the day’ and queued for up to three hours before being allowed entry.

“Since 2005 we’ve run over twelve GTM events around the country, and we have never experienced that amount of traffic entering an event at the one time,” one of the organisers implored in a heart-on-sleeve statement.

“GTM prides itself on taking an amazing array of artists into various regions of Australia and putting on a great day out. We share the disappointment and understand the frustration that some of our patrons experienced in Bendigo.”

No doubt sitting at any gate for three hours ticket in hand is mildly irritating, but it happens all the time at festivals around the country and is easily addressed: You want to catch a band early on the bill, you turn up with a ridiculous amount of time to spare. Occasionally at festivals you miss things you’d like to see, or you get rained on, or you have to line up for an inordinate amount of time to buy a felafel burger. Big deal. This is what it is to be young, folks. This is being a punter.

The organisers of music festival Pyramid Rock issued a firm but sweet apology over a freak storm that forced the cancellation of acts including Van She, Empire of the Sun and The Butterfly Effect. Why this failed to be seen as a cause for celebration is a question that sadly remains unanswered, though either way it appears punters were sated by the grovelling provided.

It goes on. When too many people fancied cramming in to DJ ‘Jive Bunny for the 2000s’ GirlTalk at Melbourne’s 2009 St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, there was nearly a riot. Organisers apologised, and sent free tickets for the 2010 event to anybody who complained in writing. The Lost Weekend festival in Brisbane apologised for having to move venues and not achieving ‘critical mass’, which I believe is festival speak for ‘not selling enough tickets’. Bluesfest organisers routinely apologise in advance for the revoltingly muddy conditions, forcing people to - gasp - purchase gumboots.

The strange thing about all these ‘forgive me punter for I have sinned’ press releases is that festival-goers are by nature a tolerant lot. Outside of crushing them to death in poorly constructed mosh pits or worse, running out of full strength beer before 2pm, they’ll pretty much accept anything organisers throw their way with amiable shrugs and cheery resignation.

When you attend a music festival - particularly one that involves camping, the outdoors, or the slightly terrifying term ‘nature doof’ - you essentially sign a contract saying “I’m well aware I shall return home in a state of utter physical disrepair with ringing ears, mud-caked nostrils, bruised limbs and a staggeringly brutal headache and this, my friends, is quite acceptable. I also commit to leaving festival grounds in possession of a ruined tent, a box of soggy Cheezels that a passerby may or may not have pissed in, and a lingering regret I sat through an entire Xavier Rudd gig without throwing something hard and pointy at the stage”.

Why the need for such recriminations and teeth-gnashing on the part of organisers? They’re music festivals, they’re for the most part a gorgeous, idiotic mess. Go, get sunburned and hassled by security guards and vomit lavishly into an overflowing toilet at 2am, courtesy of food poisoning. Harden the f**k up and have a ball. Apologies be damned.

Marieke Hardy is a writer and regular panelist on the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club.

Clients From Hell: Actual email from a band

Sun, 09 May 2010 10:07:19 +1000

Clients From Hell: Actual email from a band:

k so we want album work done,just a cover fpr a cd and of course a logo on it we are releasing an E.P that is we are pying about $2000 for and we want it to be superb.. we want it to be really super cool and epic. detailed and precise our budget.. we will discuss it. we want an angelic demon…

.EFF: there is never theft in the Communist Paradise

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 09:05:26 +1000

from roughlydrafted.com, who are usually very pro-apple. I just like the writing.

Daniel Eran Dilger

Enemies of Apple are boiling to the surface like ants scrambling from a rotten log on fire. Their outrage emanates from a deep moral disgust over the company reporting the theft of its property and appealing to the rule of law.
. EFF: there is never theft in the Communist Paradise

The first sign of abhorrence directed toward Apple came from the EFF, which most definitely is not Apple’s BFF. This is the group seeking to convert the success of Apple’s iPhone App Store into a communal software paradise like that of Linux, where everyone writes their own code and proprietors can suck it. For the EFF, there’s no such thing as intellectual property, and it’s really just a small intellectual leap to say there’s no such thing as property.

And if you don’t have ownership, you can’t have theft. That appears to be the manifesto of the EFF, which has taken the position it once argued in behalf of bloggers (in a case including AppleInsider), that insisted investigative writers of all sorts should be accorded the legal protections of journalists in protecting their sources, and extrapolated a new understanding that suggests you can commit any sort of property theft as long as you write about it afterward.

Boom: instant protection! The Shield Law for journalists is now a way to prevent police from investigating crimes. Just explicitly state the amount you paid for stolen merchandise in your blog, print private personal information about the victim you deprived of his property, then claim you have no idea who the property could have belonged to and Shazam! you are a journalist shrouded in a cloak of magical invincibility.

DailyTech – Gizmodo Staff May Face Felony Over Lost iPhone, EFF Says Raid Was Illegal

Don’t Task, Don’t Tell

Since theft simply doesn’t exist without the capitalist fiction of personal property, and considering that the real victim is always the person who benefits from stealing from moneyed fat cat corporations, the obvious conclusion is that anyone who supports the rule of law or asks for protection and redress under it must be downright square. And a narc. And perhaps a witch.

The real outrage is that Apple works with the Po-Po to prevent theft and recover stolen property. What bastards. And when it finds people have taken its stuff, it tattles to the police and then forces the District Attorney to take the theft seriously. I know when my friends have had their iPhones stolen at a bar, it’s just a funny thing we laugh about.

Once I text messaged a thief who had taken my friend’s phone along with his jacket and keys and wallet, offering a reward for return. The theft told me to copulate with myself, albeit using the German word. I laughed for days at his hardline stance against the Man and my naively slavish devotion to the concept of property, intellectual or otherwise. It made me want to leave my own iPhone sitting on a bar stool, just so I could relive the excitement of spreading my resources around to the finders-keepers community.

Surely, the fact that Apple “provides training, personnel, and support” to the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, a group of 17 local, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies headquartered in the corporation’s own Santa Clara County, biases the government agencies in favor of Apple as a victim of theft, and predisposes it against the thieves. This is fascism at its worst.

This is also another disgusting abrogation of freedom in our country, where the government increasingly plays a role favoring victims of crime rather than the perpetrators of theft. What we really need to do is to elect another Republican governor for California like, say, Carly Fiorina, so she can further downsize the burdensome regulatory rule of law and lay off the oppressive role of Gubment like so many axed HP employees. Once that happens, Goldman Sachs and others who have acquired wealth illegally can hold onto it without being roughed up by federal bureaucrats and their tax collecting socialist-fascist pawns who want to build public works like schools and highways rather than subsidizing private enterprise like the state subsidized prisons designed to hold immigrants and pot smokers.

The report of Apple’s outrageous collusion with REACT was broken by John Cook, a reporter for the esteemed “Yahoo! News” and (secretly) a former blogger employed by the same Gawker Media that sponsored the checkbook journalism that resulted in Gizmodo’s property seizure investigation in the first place. If you follow the money trail, it leads right to the crime. And to the report of the crime, spun as a conspiracy by Gawker’s friends. And that conspiracy involves Apple. Guilty as charged, Steve Jobs.

The Free Ride is Over

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 22:08:12 +1000

From cbsnews.

Scientists in Israel have successfully fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA, potentially undercutting what has been considered key evidence in the conviction or exoneration in crime cases, the New York Times reported .

According to the newspaper, the scientists also demonstrated that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“Any biology undergraduate could perform this, said Dr. Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which is published online in the journal Genetics .

The paper asserts that while DNA analysis has become a centerpiece of law enforcement, the possibility that such evidence can be faked has not been considered.

“This is potentially huge news in the world of criminal justice, which hasnt yet even fully had the time to embrace DNA for all of its uses,” said CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen . “And I suspect it wont be long before defense attorneys are using this study to undercut DNA analysis and conclusions in cases all over the country.”

“This is potentially terrible news for prosecutors and police and the military and all sorts of industries that use DNA testing to confirm or find information,” Cohen adds. “As the papers author says, ‘You can now just engineer a crime scene.’ Good news for crime dramas on television but not so much to the criminal justice system.”

“Itll be interesting to see how the legal world reacts to it and whether this study will be embraced or scorned by DNA experts here in the States,” Cohen said. “But you can be sure that before too long DNA evidence in criminal cases all over will be challenged based upon these findings.”

Science - Dymaxion Sleep

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:24:30 +1000

Science - Dymaxion Sleep:

(via Instapaper)

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/why-records-do-all-sound-same

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:24:03 +1000

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/why-records-do-all-sound-same:

Interesting perspective.

(via Instapaper)

So twitter doesn’t work, eh?

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:23:30 +1000

So twitter doesn’t work, eh?:

Smartypants cops.

(via Instapaper)

The AMP 2009: A Riposte

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:10:00 +1100

The AMP 2009: A Riposte:

Chris Johnston writes about Lisa Mitchell winning the AMP prize. It’s interesting how music forums push insiders into this kind of writing; I wonder if it’s a good thing to post this kind of thing publicly or not?

http://www.messandnoise.com/articles/3902643

blog

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:57:37 +1100

It’s been a while since I blogged - been a little busy with the big day out, but I thought I might take a few seconds to write about the last few months. Justine and Calix and I spent Christmas in Sydney with her parents, and then on boxing day took off to Wombeyan Caves - a spot that Jus picked. We were about 100kms out of mobile range, on the other side of Mittagong. On Boxing day, of course, it was pissing down rain all day, and we were driving through clouds - this was stressful because we didn’t really know where we were going. The road wound through and up and down mountains and finally ended up at a beautiful cave system.

We camped in our small 3 room tent, and Justine cooked both over campfire and our little stove. It was generally relaxing not having anyone be able to contact us, but caused an amount of stress at the office when they were unable to get me.

Caving was fun, and once the rain had passed was certainly the coolest part of the day for us. Calix saw some monitor lizards and kangaroos, but none of us slept very well and by the time we got back to Sydney we were completely exhausted. Not really a great way to go into Big Day Out.

Big Day Out has been on the road for about 2 weeks now - and the Auckland, Gold Coast and 2 x Sydney shows have all been successful. The Sydney show always causes me stress from the point of view of just being hammered for access of every kind to every part of the site, but I took a relatively hard line this year on people and just tried to focus on what I had to do, which revolved around the fireworks show mostly.

Even though there was an issue with the video on the Friday night, the Saturday night fireworks went off without a hitch and ended the 100th show with a bang. For once in my life I made it to a Sydney BDO after show party with Justine and had a few drinks, although the next day was hard.

So here we are in Melbourne - the 101st Big Day Out. Wish us luck and lets see whats next.

b. #fb

Zonked.

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:34:50 +1100

Zonked.

More New Music

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:29:55 +1100

Train 6 is another one of those tracks written on headphones on a train. There are 6 of them, but I’ve only uploaded 2 (Train 3, and Train 6, I think).

Train 6 by bensuthers