Children of the Krell

[hirez]

I've been playing with this. It's harder than it looks.

Then there's this.

Comments

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

Woah SUPER-SHINY!

We expect a full report, Comrade.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

As a dude what has somewhat regular Problems With Stress, I'd been seriously thinking about tracking down a little brain-watchy gizmo for easy biofeedback. And lo, there one is! A quick looksie found the Neurosky package is now $100, which is right there in my 'I'll try this' range.

Also, I once knew a guy who claimed to know the guy what for the Krell were named. He was a stage magician who hung out on BBSes in the '80s. I'm pretty sure his engine ran on unfiltered bull leavings.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

The Mattel game-thing is £29 in Toysaurus and seems cheerfully hackable. I'm not entirely convinced that the game-bit is picking up anything other than the half dozen poorly-shielded bits of kit cluttering the room, but the Arduino hack seems tolerably respectable.

Proper Scientists will be laughing into their handbags at this point, but the NS link is jolly interesting. Although I am not about to wire myself up with a PP9 and some stripped-back Cat5.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I want to see if it's possible to get into the Flow state faster and on purpose.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I noticed the Mindwave is now a lot cheaper - £99 here in the UK with extra stuff:
http://myndplay.com/products.php

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I may well look into the hackable version, since that is so much more skiffynerd. But the off-the-shelf has an appeal to those of us who use soldering irons primarily for fixing the silver inlay on celluloid. (A tricky thing, I can tell you!)

I'd come across the stuff about induced flow states a few days ago, and it sounds very interesting for other people to do a lot so I can figure out if I want to try it.

[badnewswade.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, if anyone wants a super-cheap analogue (or at least, non-computerised) version of same, all you need to do is wire up a cheap multimeter to a pair of TENS electrodes (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-SQUARE-TENS-ELECTRODE-PADS-REUSABLE-TENS-MACHINES-/250824726907?pt=UK_BOI_Medical_Lab_Equipment_Medical_Equipment_Instruments_ET&hash=item3a6651997b) and move the selector either to its most sensitive DC setting or to "Ohms".

It isn't very good though, and the combination of mild DC and electrodes on your head might have unhealthy side-effects (like tingling, mild pain, eventual head-cancer and looking like a dick) - but it will give you an idea of what to expect.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

If pissing about with a set of electrodes on a black nylon band isn't well Gibsonian cyberhero, then I don't know what is...

... Yeah, you're right - looking like a dick.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I'm sold!

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

for a while there i thought we might have been bidding against each other on the eBay; I have recently picked up both a Mindflex and a Force Trainer. my plan was to take the back off both and see if i could run a set of jump-leads off the fan and into a CV-to-MIDI interface to control synths, both for my own gigs and as an instrument for folks who haven't got much in the way of motor skills.

Coincidentally, I'm also learning about Monaural and Binaural beats with my HNC students (following on from some group study on creating our own binaural recording equipment) which also has a crossover with what you're exploring.

we really should get together for a pint; it's been a long time and much has changed...

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

It puts the brain into its flow-state, or else it gets the shock again.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

A theremin is easier...

[quercus.livejournal.com]

A question, O sound-wise one - how do I make a Live Album?

I have an event. I have bands. I have some sound kit. I want to produce a CD of the lot. How do I start and in particular how do I record the thing? Cheap twin-track solid state recorder to an SD card and just grab the final live mix, or do I need a big box-of-chips to multitrack it into a laptop, or should I hire something complicated?

Then there's the whole production malarkey...

Thanks

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

For most people, I agree. I'm now working with people for whom the motor skills to play instruments that require any sort of finesse of movement is out of their reach and want to involve them in music somehow. I do some work with Soundbeam (bespoke kit, expensive, tends towards General Midi twee sounds) which requires some movement but can be configured to respond to anything from tiny to vast movements and picked up via ultrasonic sensors, but I'd like to include people with minimal or no motor skills in the music workshops too, hence my interest in brainwave-powered sound generators.

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

The answer to the question, regrettably, does not fit in this box. But then again, if it did, I'd probably be out of a job...

Opinions differ (as with everything to do with sound) but for a degree of control, you're aiming for a multiple-mic set-up with the majority of mics picking up what they're aimed at and, as much as possible, not much else. This is generally the job of a unidirectional dynamic mic (yer SM58 as seen at most gigs) rather than your expensive condenser mic, so my preference is to plonk half a dozen of those (or similar) on the key instruments (kick & snare drum, guitars, vocals) and then use two condensers as overheads to add in a bit of audio glue by capturing the full stereo image. Record those and mix to taste.

My preference at the moment is for a 14-channel rackmount soundcard & laptop (the computer doesn't need to do anything fancy; my pc is about 6 years old and single core 2Ghz / 1Gb ram and will record 8 channels fine). 2-track to SD-card is fine for bootlegging-style recording (Edirol, Alesis, Zoom, Tascam and Sony all do a range of acceptable flavours at various price-points), or you could buy an all-in-one hard disc multi-track recorder - £300 used to buy you a Tascam 4-track, but it'll now buy you 8 channels in, 16 out, a drum machine, a guitar tuner, built in mics, soundcard and control interface:
http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/zoom-r16-digital-recorder-usb-audio-interface-and-daw-controller--64482
(We've got one at work, it does the job nicely).

Hiring will buy you pro kit with pro complications - at that stage you're as well to hire someone in to do it for you and bring their own kit (and problems) with them. I can provide 1st year degree students who'd be keen to do it for work experience and a pint of ale.

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

Also, this:
https://www.soundonsound.com/DElogin.php?deid=103

Which pretty much says the same thing over 30 pages with glossy photos and diagrams.

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

Is it working ? And in general, do you get the feeling you're in control of the thing ?

[quercus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that. I begin to see the problem of taking the two track output of the desk and missing out on some of the drum sound.

Overall, I think I'm still inclined to the two-track route on the basis that I know I can actually do it. Multi-tracking would be better, but it's a lot more kit and complexity. The question now would become "If I go two track, how much am I losing and how do I minimise this?" Given the venues and bands involved, I think this is still achievable.

The student idea is certainly interesting. Where's your favoured venue for talking further about this? email? Farcebook?

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I have achieved something related to success. In that I have wired the serial out of the EEG chipset to the Arduino and faffed about with various bits of code and rather flash visualisation malarkey, which produces graphs that appear to come from my head. At least if I pull the electrode away, then the graph stops.

Connection quality seems to be something of a problem. Perhaps I need to use a more conductive moisturiser?

"Hello. I am experimenting with homebrew brain visualisation and also wish to keep my skin younger looking. What skincare product do you recommend?"

[hirez.livejournal.com]

See the article. While you could busk it with the fan-board, you get a lot more interesting data out the back of the brain interface.

Ha. It really is the C21st - I'm hacking a brain interface.

Beer. Yes.

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

2-track might be just fine depending on what you want to do with it after. The only downside is you're kinda stuck with the decisions about sound that are made on the night, but if they are good decisions, then it's all fine of course.

Feel free to natter about things here or by email on lee@wasp-factory.com

[lee-chaos.livejournal.com]

For the purposes of what I need, at least to start with, a simple analogue output on the thinking / not thinking dial will be sufficient. Single inputs alone are hard enough to manage, but trying to do the alpha-beta wave equivalent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy is almost certainly going to be beyond most of the clients I need.

Do let me know if anything good crops up at the Cube and I'll pop over for an ale one evening (or otherwise I'll have to blag on with my own event). If only so I can tell you events like this as they happen:

http://kinetica-artfair.com/

...and not 2 days after.