Jon Porter

Spring?

28Mar10

Space is the final frontier! This is an image that is 10 billion light years old! I find it really awesome but kinda depressing that something can be so far away. If you think about it, it makes you feel small… I mean you have to measure the speed of light in years…. that is fast.

Another Ableton video! The reason I am posting this is because I stumbled across this when I was in the tutorial phase of learning Ableton. You can control video live with the sounds synced to the video and was thinking about doing something of this sort for my final project.

I haven’t been very political I guess I am old enough now to start to be interested in the government. I wouldn’t consider myself a democrat… but after the shenanigans of the republican party, I really don’t know if I could ever consider myself apart of the republican party… media matters is a site that keeps track of the crazy stuff of the right wing.

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09Mar10

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Spring Break (almost)

08Mar10

Yay! almost spring break! I have been working on my graphic design project and have realized how much it is actually comes into play with our lives and we don’t even know it. Or random crazy facts like… if you dug a hole through the Earth and fell through it would take you 42 minutes to get to the other side! (check it out!)

UH-OHH! Tech-War!… Apple and Google are fighting it out with Apple suing HTC which supports the Google made software that stole Apple’s “patents”

Anyway it is spring like outside.. or at least its starting to feel like it… but springs always brings something with it… and you might be asking what is that?…. INCUBUS… here you go I don’t know if there is a better group of musicians out there?

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Caravaggio!

01Mar10

This image was painted by Michelangelo Caravaggio, who was an Italian painter born in September of 1571. While in Milan he was trained under a master painter that was taught by Titian so there are a lot of similarities of Titian with his lighting and dramatic implied movement and hierarchy of light. During this time in history the Catholic church was searching for artists to fill their churches with paintings that promoted Catholicism against the growing Protestant following. So one will see a lot of religious influence in paintings because of the sanction of the Church for the time. This painting depicts the story of the sacrifice of Isaac that was told in the bible. One can see Caravaggio’s style with the angel coming in from the side and the lightness of his shoulder blade and the implied lines of the faces and eyes looking at each other and the dramatic highlights of the skin help guide the eye around the painting. The contrast of dark darks and hilighted lights help to emphasize the parts of the painting that Caravaggio wanted you to see. This also is combined with the dramatic and horrific act that is taking place, the emotion is captured in the faces and expressions of all forms. Depicting the story of the ultimate loyalty, Abraham is asked to kill his son Issac but just at the last second an angel is sent down to stop him because he was so loyal listened to God. I think this image was made because of the Church sanctioning and paying well for artists paintings and sculptures. Caravaggio painted a previous composition that a cardinal was pleased with and gave him the go a head to make a painting. I feel as this painting depicts horrific event but also implies that you must trust in God. However I find it funny that Caravaggio was in three “brawls” and in one of them he actually killed a man and fled from Rome with a bounty on his head. I feel that his seemingly violent nature is embeded in his work.

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Soulwax!

01Mar10

One of my favorite bands ever! It is really hard to explain Soulwax… as you see they are a brother dj duo, but they are also a rock band and they put out an album remixing their old songs called night versions. They also tour as 2manydjs.. where they have live bands and they mix in and out of live songs. I have recently been into the dj set ups of many people because I’m a nerd like that!

here is a video of them playing in the studio.

I think one of the many reasons that I really love Soulwax is that they play so many different types of music and it is amazing to me how they can just mix in and out of songs that you wouldnt think would go together… this style of mixing is heard more in the Radio Soulwax mixes.

I know many people wouldn’t like this but I think the Beethoven remix just shows the dynamic of the group… it sounds so smooth.

Here is the song by Soulwax the rock band that inspired the 2manydjs name, I think its weird how they transformed into djs by asking if they could play at clubs after their shows because they didnt like what the dj was playing.

Their studio and how they get their awesome sound! I hope to have all of this one day.

Here is an intro by one of my favorite graphic designers doing an intro to a Soulwax documentary called “Part of the Weekend Never Dies”

Soulwax playing live as a band doing their remixes live

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Not Enough Sleep

22Feb10

Recently I have been staying up really late messing with audio mixing/editing… I have been inspired by this group.. Simian Mobile Disco… you might not like the music, but it looks super fun to play with. I have been working with ableton live and it is a pit of no return… once you use it it sucks you in and you wanna keep using it. Anyway, here is their set up for playing live. There is always something that I love about bands that tell you how they play.

here is a video of them playing live,

Like I have said I have been playing with ableton live, I have been trying to figure out all of the ins and outs of the program (which is pretty much impossible). One of my favorite new features for live is the Max software that now runs with ableton. Max is a program where you can create pretty much any device, plug-in, effect, instrument you want. One of my new favorite things is a step-sequencer.

You can pretty much control any midi instrument with that… or a sampler which can contain different audio samples.

I have been combining many midi effects to instruments and this is one that I’m kinda happy about…

this is helpful because I am still learning musical scales and chords… so you can add this to an instrument with other effects and get REAL crazy but it still sounds like it fits together and you can focus on how you want things to sound. It does seem like one would be “cheating” in music making… but hey, technology is here to help us right? That is one thing I love about ableton you don’t just have to play dance music, or jazz, or whatever… you can just play and blend styles….

That is what I have been doing recently!.. hope you enjoyed it!

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VDAY!

15Feb10

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

I just saw this documentary called “No Impact Man” and have been very inspired to kinda change how I live… not as extreme as this guy, but this movie is a good insight to a life and the “struggles” for a no impact life

I just got this book for a present for valentine’s day and it is very interesting. It is called the “The Secret Lives of Great Artists” It has 200-something pages of famous artists and how fucked up their lives were, I always find out that the art is so much more interesting when you know the story of the artists and their motivation for creating.

I also have come across a video which freeline skates were involved… idk what to think about them, tell me what you guys think?

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I Want Spring!

07Feb10

I really can’t wait until it is nice and warm out, I miss longboarding. Just going out and just pushing and seeing the world… noooooott baaaaddd.

I thought this was a cool idea. Charles and his girlfriend Alli upload a new video everyday and they are doing it for a year. It is just normal everyday things that they do, but it is kinda weird how you get sucked into watching. I thought it was a good way to look back on your life and share it with everyone, it almost inspires me to start a vlog.