Just a quick word for anyone on the research.adamjansch.co.uk RSS feed that the contents of this blog are being moved to an all new Tumblr blog at http://phd.adamjansch.co.uk. This will be my last post at research.adamjansch.co.uk for the purposes of the PhD, and come February 1st this URL will redirect to the new site (until I decide whether to release a more general research blog in the future).

The reason for switching to Tumblr is largely simplicity. With WordPress, even if a site is archived and not added to, the underlying software needs to be maintained: at Tumblr all of this is taken of and I don’t have to think about it. Also, my WordPress theme is incomplete and I was not interested enough to finish it (the theme for the new Tumblr site is pretty rad).

Mainly, though, I wanted to have the PhD blog, and all the works, events and writings associated with it, presented together in one place, and what better place than at my PhD subdomain (the previous DokuWiki installation hosted there has been removed). My main website will continue to show all of my media, including that outside of the PhD.

Yes, I missed another post last week. The problem is that when I start programming I tend to get completely sucked in, to a point where it’s hard to break away for blogging and other such activities. This does mean though that I have made some significant progress with Futures EP, and moved forward with other things too.

The main goal for Futures EP when I last posted was to get the audio system running. Because I had encountered timing issues with the higher-level AVAudioPlayer and the AV Foundation layer it was necessary to go a level lower and deal with playing audio using Audio Units, a solution which gives access to sample accurate synchronisation of audio.

And, with much head scratching along the way, I proceeded down that road. With the help of Apple’s Audio Unit Hosting Guide and iPhoneMultichannelMixerTest example, and various third party web sites – including Tim Bolstad’s iPhone Core Audio – Getting Started, the development of Loopy by A Tasty Pixel, and numerous posts regarding Core Audio at Cocoa With Love – I have managed to implement a sample-accurate audio playback engine for Tapes. Super. But there is still a way to go yet.

Work also progressed on the tunes themselves: I have recorded and edited vocals for Futures, and figured out the final section to put into Tapes (a tasty speech section recorded on to my Sony Cassette-Corder and rerecorded back into the tune – see http://twitpic.com/6c0qyn and http://twitpic.com/6c1789). So a big bunch of mixing is in order.

And if that wasn’t all I have also been working on documentation for other pieces. The last post mentioned my filming some performances of One man band x n; I’ve also got some audio/video documentation for Synth Radio and I am…, and will be recording The Chaos Engine soon too.

So all in all a very busy week with much achieved!

Back to regularity, at least for the moment! With only a few weeks left until submission I have been getting on with the last big task of the project: Tapes EP. Apart from it is now called Futures EP! Why such a big change so late? I’ll explain below…

An update before that: this week I have been editing and mixing the open process bass guitar part I recorded a few weeks ago for the tune Futures (previously Decisions, and before that Contemplation), and have plans to record the lyrics next week; also progress has been made on the iOS side of things, culminating in a great looking UI for iPhone and iPad (which works in all orientations).

I still have a few things to connect up here and there, and a significant problem to fix regarding the volume slider in portrait orientation whilst in iPhone mode. During this early development phase I have made a concerted effort for the app to be universal (i.e. iPhone and iPad specific in one app) and for all device orientations to be supported. To this end I followed the guidance at http://www.kotancode.com/2011/04/05/ios-universal-apps/ and set up device-specific controllers. Also, as portrait and landscape orientations required different layouts I had to implement the switching of views when the device’s orientation changes: http://aseriesoftubes.com/articles/ipad-development-101-orientation/ helped out greatly here.

Into next week I will press on with the audio side of things, in particular implementing Core Audio Unit processing to improve timing precision. Also over next week I will be filming some performances of One man band x n for documentation purposes, so I may have a video of this ready for my next post.

And finally, why the change to Futures EP? This came about as I figured out what the second track of the EP was all about: one’s possible futures. When setting up the new Xcode project for the EP I realised that Futures EP was the more appropriate name for the release (more forward looking perhaps? ). So there you go!

Some notable news though: I have handed in ‘Form 9′, which is the notification to the university that I will be submitting my thesis within 2-6 months – in my case I have set my submission date as September 30th 2011. To I now have a concrete deadline to work towards and plenty to do!

What is necessary to hit this deadline? I must complete the thesis commentary (which is almost fully drafted now), finish Tapes EP and fill in all the documentation required for the works. In two months this is achievable, so let’s get on with it!

Both gigs were with HELOpg, one at the Frome Festival and the other at Access Space in Sheffield. These gigs were notable for HELOpg too. First of all, both gigs featured only three players each, which is smaller than the usual average of five players. Secondly, we had some presentational differences too: at the Frome Festival we set ourselves up the so audience could view our screens as we performed; in Sheffield we were playing a headphone gig, so the audience experienced all the acts over headphones.

A bit of news I wouldn’t have known about last week is my inclusion as guest presenter on The Audio Podcast, a weekly series run and presented by Scott Hewitt and Sam Freeman. This came about as we decided to record the whole show in the car on the way home from Frome! The main topic was, aptly, tips on laptop performance. Check out The Audio Podcast website at http://www.theaudiopodcast.co.uk/ and subscribe here.

Lastly, I am balancing my time between ICMC preparation and getting a first draft of my commentary together. On the latter point, I am trying to get this together in the next couple of weeks, and when done I will hand in my ‘Notification of Intention to Submit a Thesis for Examination’ form – a big moment!

Human jukebox x n is built around a technological configuration called a ‘performer unit’, which creates a split between what a performer and the audience hear: where each performer is fed a mix of their individual instrumental input along with a feed from their own jukebox source through headphones, the audience hears just the combined instrumental outputs of the performers. Through this, and the wide staging of the band in the performance space, the mechanics of the conventional performer/audience barrier are reconfigured.

The jukebox is employed as a method of allowing the audience control of their sonic experience: each performer has chosen their own playlist of tunes to play to and it is up to the audience to select from these tunes. They may choose to use this responsibility as they wish, with the possibility for synchronising the performers externally through their musical choices or just picking the tunes that they want to hear.

The jukebox is of a custom-design, created by Jansch using HTML5 and Javascript for use in a modern web browser. It displays the song list, currently playing song and the upcoming song queue. It also features additional functionality built-in for the performance situation: auto-playback of tunes when quiet, and breaks for the performers when busy.

For the performers it is important to embody the tunes that they play to: in performance they should make the tunes their own, through stage presence, musical embellishment and the like. Also, sunglasses are a vital part of the costume, reinforcing the performer/audience barrier.

The premiere of Human jukebox x n was held at in tones: brass/jukebox/television/glitch at the University of Huddersfield on April 3rd 2011. It ran for 90 minutes, with Anikó Tóth on vocals, Pat Allison on electric guitar, Richard Glover on keyboards and Jansch on bass guitar. Video highlights of this performance can be seen below.

Human jukebox x 4 highlights from Adam Jansch on Vimeo.