Impeccable Surface: Scott Goodwin Audio Works

VEPA

2011-12-16T13:38:00.000-08:00

Really proud of this one. VEPA is a tape of Pete Swanson and I playing music together for the first time. For eight years we've been pushing each other to make the best music we can make by exchanging honest critique on each other's music and generally musing over expensive beers about why we even do this music thing at all. Usually we were too focused on our own projects to really jam out casually, but we made time for some sessions before Pete left Portland for nursing school at Columbia. For VEPA we attempted to combine some approaches we've both been working on lately, namely Pete's tape-saturated echo/loop processing and some of the rhythmic density we'd been exploring in Operative. It pairs really nicely with Pete's recent, excellent Man with Potential, but is much more destroyed and laconically paced.

I have some tapes for sale in the "Market" and they'll soon be available at several East Coast spots (including Mimaroglu) very soon.

VEPA - #2 by bonusplays

Sale

2011-06-29T17:57:00.000-07:00

Posted a few things for sale in the "Market" section to the left. Funds generated from sales here go toward building new equipment, writing new pieces, and releasing records. Okay, and beer, pizza, etc. Mostly to building new stuff though.

In other news, Operative is recording for a full-length of some kind to be released in Autumn. Its sounding pretty good and to date is (with few exceptions) the most chill recording and mixing situation I've ever been involved in with other folks. Who would have guessed?

Cusp

2011-05-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'm moving for the first time in 5 years (just down the street), so it'll be a bit before offering anything for sale. Some new show announcements: two for Operative this summer and one I'm co-presenting with Birch Cooper featuring the Slaves, Jim Haynes, and Brendan Murray.

The upside of life being hectic is that there's tons of irons in the fire. Upcoming stuff from Lander 5 (myself on fucked rando-modulated analog and digital synths) on Draft Tapes, polyrhythmic house with Avalon K of Finesse under the guise "Polonaise", and a collab tape with Pete Swanson. Keep watching.

Rebirth, Rehaul, Revive

2011-03-09T18:23:00.000-08:00

A new look for Impeccable Surface is done and I like the vibe much better. I'm attempting to transition this site into more of a resume/CV/collected works archive while my regular blogging duties reside at operativegroup.org and Ecstasy. In the next few days I'll be adding audio from out-of-print works like Referent and unreleased music from the Kinder score I did in collaboration with Emma Ruth-Lipp. Some new projects have just begun and I've even fired up the soldering iron for the first time in a long time. Operative is looking at recording very soon and we should have our first significant release ready by early-Fall.

In the meantime, I have copies of the Operative 12" and Off Light available for sale, but not many are left. Act soon if you're curious or come say "Hi" at some of the upcoming events I've got going on.

Re-org. Tone Filth. Autumnal hymnal.

2009-10-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Henceforth, all "Scott Goodwin" audio, text, and news will be posted here and all things Operative will be at the Operative blog or a domain to be determined.

The heart of Operative.

Additionally, I have a new C24 cassette, "Referent" on Tone Filth with design by the esteemed JCM. I have a few availible for sale as a bundle with my CD on Root Strata "Off Light" for $13 US and $15 WORLD.

What the Tone Filth C24 looks like.

Operative is mainly consuming my creative time right now. A live band is coalescing around myself, Spencer Doran, and Jed Bindeman that is pretty great. "Scott Goodwin" will be my preferred moniker for longer-form compositions while Operative is exploring psycho-dynamic structures in Techno and House music. Thanks to Maxwell Croy for shooting this little clip at the On Land Festival in San Francisco:

2009-07-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

I'm now out of Impeccable Surface CDRs so I thought I'd offer it for download here. Above: Phase Eins functional and ready for calibrating. Cabinet construction begins soon. I'll post more detailed info later. Happy 4th of July, Americans.

2009-05-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

I've put together a youTube play list of case studies in electronic music performance for a new project I'm working on called "Operative". All of these performances or videos have really interesting visual schemas for performances of the works in question. Here are some notes as they relate to ideas that might be used in Operative:

Tubeway Army - Gary Numan - Are Friends Electric
Synth players on platforms! This is a space-efficient and underused way to create better sight lines for certain players in a band. It also sort of frames the lead singer quite well in Tubeway Army's case. Platforms or risers can also very cheap to build yourself. For some reason it reminds me of tamboura players in Hindustani Classical Music:

Line Describing a Cone 2-13-07
Not a musical performance at all, but I love the simplicity and abstract, basic beauty that it conveys. Structural film, what little I've seen, has been a instrumental in my thinking about music lately.

Tony Conrad - Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain
Speaking of structural film. I owe a deep debt to Tony Conrad for so much. 'Four Violins' radically altered how I came to think about, understand, and appreciate music. This piece seems to be at the intersection of Dream Music and "The Flicker".

Daft Punk Red Triangle
Spectacular. What I've seen in documentation from the Alive tour is pretty mindblowing and incredible. This took me back to the incredible visuals Bill Viola did for NIN on the Fragile tour I saw back in 2001, my first arena concert. When doing research for Operative I keep looking back to ridiculous rock/pop concert visuals. Some of it is really amazing and rivals a lot of modern installation art, or at least I think its safe to say there's some over lap between those two cultures despit high/low art considerations.

Screamers - Vertigo
Physicality and the body is something that electronic music plays with a lot when talking about performance. Because you can make a large amount of sound with very little corelative movement, electronic music allows you to do the Kraftwerk thing and sort of deny the body. The Screamers did very cool, physically active and confrontational electronic punk music. Singer Tomata DuPlenty's background in mime/drag perfomance really makes this band a rich experience. I was lucky enough to see a really bizzare Target Video "Screamers Live" bootleg once, I think at the Masque or the Whiskey, and between the band and the crowd it was a total freak show. Why they were lost to history and we were left with the Germs, X, and the Go-gos, I'll never understand.

Model 500/Cybotron - Cosmic Raindance & Alleys Of Your Mind
Model 500 live at DEMF Detroit. I'd never heard the first piece "Cosmic Raindance", and the jitting of the X-Men really ads to the context for Juan Atkin's music. As techno spiraled out from Detroit it lost a lot of its specificity and since it never really gained much of a foothold at home its hub of activity quickly migrated to Berlin. This clip reminds you of how techno began as a local, regional style cobbled together from a common set of influeneces on a small group of original innovators.

Sunno)) @ Dominofest AB 'Moog Ceremony' April 2006
Atypical of SUNN0))) for this era, this piece is all electronic and I think it works well. Comes out more like a techno Les Raillizes Denudes, but I think that's great. I also like how the band is in the back with the focus on the outsize personality of Julian Cope and they synthesizers themselves. If ever you could accuse a band of commodity fetish though...

Whitehouse - Live Action 39 Reseda 6-21-84
I'm fascinated by Whitehouse, but not as much for their musical output so much as thier rigourous mythmaking and general [presumed] degeneracy. Though to be fair, I quite enjoyed that last interview in the Wire and I feel a bit of common cause with their investigation of NLP and how to go about making music that plugs directly into the brain. The whole power electronics genre amuses me mainly because Whitehouse were sort of explicitly a band formed because they felt ealry industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle were moving in a less "extreme", "safer" direction. The irony is that a bunch of bands then set out to prove that Whitehouse had done the same. What I really like about this video is the grainy quality, the layout of thier stage performance and their somewhat confounding "rocker" look. Please, please read William Bennett's reviews of recent feature films on his blog.

5/24 Progress Report

2009-05-24T19:30:00.001-07:00

A progress report on "Phase Eins" is long over due. Above is my expanded basement soldering and assembly station. Its a bit of a mess, but that means I've been busy. I scored some useful tools from a nearby estate sale recently, including that amazingly useful lamp. Between that and my drill, I've been rolling along, mainly in the wiring phase of building this thing.
Above is what's more or less done at the moment. On the left are two VCOs which are almost finished. One needs calibrating and one needs a coarse range resistor cludge and calibrating, but they sound pretty damn good. The left most module is the one that was giving me trouble originally, which Daryl Grotesch helped me troubleshoot. Turns out I read a 15V +/- mod incorrectly on the MFOS VCO schematic and the thing wasn't getting any negative power. A few ICs and resistors later, its ready to be hooked up to an oscilloscope. The second VCO didn't really give me any problems except the range issue, which just needs an additional resistor cludged in parallel to be fixed to my liking. The right most module is the MFOS VCLFO which is the lastest to be completed and looks the best cosmetically, especially with regards to wiring. The first VCO needs to be re-wired badly because it looks like a rat's nest in there, I erred a bit too much on the safe side.

This is the second VCLFO. Just needs to be wired and to have the ICs placed. Not really feeling like being in the basement all day today, because it's just too nice of a day out. But the last VCLFO wired up pretty fast. I'm anticipating the dual VCA and dual A/R generators taking a bit less time in the wiring stage, just because there's not as many jacks and pots as on the oscillators.

I've been able to get the synth to make sound and I like what I hear, considering it's not even close to finished and I have a total of three patch cables. Patch cables are on their way, as well as a couple other cosmetic components including new panels I'll need for the VCAs (drilled the panels before I really knew what I was doing). I may even ditch my Blacet FracRack and make two 5.25" X 19" rack panels to mount the synth on. This would make it more of a patch synth than a true modular, but I'm pretty confident I know what I need in a synth at this point.

Hopefully before the end of the summer I'll have 4xVCOs, 4xLFOs, 2xDualA/R, 2xDualVCAs, a row or two of attenuators and multiples and a passive ring mod or two. A filter wouldn't hurt either, but I don't know if I want to go down that road. If there's a simple state-variable filter I can build, great, if not, I can wait a bit or patch out the filter to my Yamaha CS-5 (a recent aquisition). A sequencer would be bad-ass, but I may buy or build an external one.

Today I also enlisted the help of my friend Brian Thackery to fabricate the synth's rack mount case. I've got some pretty ambitious plans for it cosmetically, but I'll wait till its done to post something here.

A really exciting time in construction. I should have everything done well before my Aug 12 show at Holocene! Hopefully I'll have all July to make music and not build for a bit.

2/22 Modular Synth

2009-02-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Oh, it had to happen sooner or later. I completed soldering of my MFOS VCO, wired up the pots and a few temporary wires to attach to a 1/4" out for testing's stake. The only things left to do after a little line check were to wire up the permanent input/output jacks and adjust the trims. I decided to check the triangle and square wave outs because those seemed most likely to emit sound.

NOTHING.

No big shock, troubleshooting is part of the point of building your own synthesizer. It just happens to be the part I dislike the most.

I triple checked all the polarized components and ICs for orientation and everything is good there to my knowledge. I'm actually sort of proud of my soldering job on all the joints and there don't seem to be any obvious shorts (see below). My first crimping job on the connector to the Blacet power supply wasn't the greatest, so I re-did that to no avail as well. I went through and checked all the components with an ohm meter and nothing seemed unusual there, though I did a pretty quick and cursory check just to see if anything was open where it shouldn't have been.

Board view from left to right (the white specs are bits of dust or dust from cutting leads, I suppose I should take a q-tip to the board):

One thing that strikes me as odd is my readings from the power inputs:
+/Ground: 15.3 V
-/Ground: 8.7V
+/-: 15.5V

I would have thought that +/- would have yielded 30v, but I could be wrong on that. The -/Ground reading is strange as well. Similar numbers come up when I test the pins on the power supply itself. Is it possible that Blacet sent me a bum power supply by accident or is it more likely that my $7 multi-meter is just way off?

After reading this post I checked power with the ohm meter. I was getting a reading for resistance from +/- like this poster did, which would suggest a short, but where?

Another idea I had was R59 which I had to unsolder and then re-insert a correct component into. I re-did some sketchy looking solder joints there but that yielded no results either.

I have a wire going from R2's pin 1 to one of the three open holes next to -15V, which seems like the right thing to do, but I'm not 100%. Another concern was the 20k resistor I soldered between the board and the -15V wire, but that seems the best way according to the MFOS schematic, as well.

UPDATE: I found some joints where the solder isn't visible from the top side of the board, so I'll go through those tomorrow or Tuesday and sure those up, but I suspect those won't be it. Too simple, but who knows?

Any thoughts? I'm probably going to post something up on electro-music.com, so hello if you're coming here from there!

2/15/09 Modular Synth

2009-02-15T22:06:00.000-08:00

Finally began work on the MFOS VCO. Worked on soldering sockets, resistors, trim pots, and ceramic caps today and will get into polarized and other heat sensitive components tomorrow. Overall it went pretty well. I had to take my time with figuring out how trim pots were oriented from the schematic and then I accidentally soldered in a multi-turn trim where a single one should have gone. That lead to a very long de-soldering process and by the time I was done I had missed the Marble Sky and Honed Bastion show. Oh well, I was on a roll for a while. I ran out to Fred Meyer to get some wire cutters and got some useless wire cutter/pliers hybrid that's dull as rock. I used some scissors to cut excess leads for now, which worked fine.

I'm a bit worried about my de-soldering job but I checked it with a multi-meter and the trim pot seemed to be still functioning. I'll keep an eye on you R59!

Ryan and I went out to check out Cascade Surplus yesterday, which was great. It's out on SE 181rst and Division, but it's worth the trip. Its a small-ish office/warehouse space that has boxes and boxes of components for pretty good prices with a bunch of stuff I recognized from the MFOS site, which will come in handy if I build any more of Ray Wilson's stuff.

2/7/09 Modular Synth Construction

2009-02-07T12:23:00.000-08:00

Today I start building my diy modular synth. This has been a project I've been planning for about six months but only really began to take seriously a few weeks ago. My vision for the synth is pretty idiosyncratic because of the nature of the music that I make, so the ultimate plan is to have a synth that will have 4xVCO, 4xLFO, 2 Dual A/R Generators, 2X Dual VCA, a row of Attenuators, and maybe an inverter or two. I'm debating planning building drum or touch sensative triggers after that's all done. This phase of building is a trial run to see if my electronics skills are up to snuff with the goal of having a working verision of the synth by April for a mini-tour I'm doing with Pete Swanson and Grouper. The actual size of the synth will be about 19"x12.75"X8" with two rows of 10 modules, though I have some questions to be answered about panel size and the FracRack format.

As of now my phase one inventory is:

8 Ray Wilson MFOS boards: 2xVCO, 2xVCLFO, 2x Dual A/R Generator, and 2x Dual VCA.
Blacet PS500, PSCONN expander, and cable crimping kit.
A $200 Mouser order with all ICs, resistors, jacks, capacitors, sockets, and some switches and transistors.

I'm still waiting on a Futurlec order that has just shipped and a potentiometer order from Small Bear. I also need to run out to buy or borrow some basics like wire strippers, cutters, extra pliers, and a multi-meter.

My mission for the next two days is to get the tools listed above, print out all of Ray's documentation for the PCBs, and sort the parts by project.

I've been really inspired and helped by the electro-music.com forums from MFOS, the Experimentalists Anonymous forum, the MuffWiggler FracRack forum, the Synth in a Month page, Dayrl Groetsch of Pulse Emitter and Justin Meyers from Tone Filth and Devillock. Many, many thanks to all those folks and to anybody else willing to help me along the way.

BORE and V∞R

2009-01-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

Reflecting upon 2008, the May Boredoms performance at the Crystal Ballroom has to be one of the most significant concerts I saw last year. Really, it was more that just a good show, it was a much needed uplifting and inspiring experience. The Boredoms as a band have interested me for a while, both for their compelling hyper-rhythmic style and the amazing conceptual and visual framework they've adapted for themselves. That night they simply blew my mind.

The band's ingenuity and brilliance is of a sort that's hard to articulate for me. I think along with Einsturzende Neubauten, there's not necessarily a plethora other bands that I find have such a continually imaginative approach to their music. Its also rare for a group to integrate their visual aesthetic and conceptual approach so fluidly. In the Boredoms' case, the natural and primary shapes seem to be a major guiding principle: the spiral, the ∞ sign, the Sun, the Sea and the shapes that act as the names for the 1999 album, Vision Creation Newsun.

Last May, the show began with the drummers sitting down at their various kits, each impeccably tuned, with eYe hobbling out last, his leg encased in a very large cast. eYe began by clutching two--well--orbs that seemed to control a synthesizer based on his gestures, all while eYe yelled and yelped without the aide of a microphone. After a few minutes the drummers began their clockwork and the set achieved lift-off. Watching three drummers play that tightly together with such a high degree of interdependence and interplay was phenomenal. It was just awesome. And luckily enough for those in attendance, the Crystal Ballroom sound system was in full effect, we're talking post-show tinnitus even with earplugs, and every sound was absolutely clear. Not the least of which were the shimmering overtones of the Sevena, eYe's custom-built instrument of seven guitars open tuned and played with two large sticks percussively. Its somewhat of a small Glenn Branca ensemble in a single instrument, one that had to be constantly maintained by the band's tech crew, removing broken strings and re-tuning the remaining ones often mid-song.

If you're not familiar with the history of the band, Sasha-Frere Jones provides a decent overview here. But in their post-2002 output, the band has continually impressed me to the point where I might actually apply labels like "visionary" and "shamanic" where I otherwise wouldn't.

Recently after hitting a creative block, I chanced upon Seadrum/House of Sun, Vision Creation Newsun, and DJ Pica Pica Pica, which is eYe's cut-up take on electronic dance music, in my music collection and dove deep. It's a rare band these days that causes me to stop and really think about the radical possibilities available in making music. I reminds me of the deep reevaluation I went into after that Boredoms show last May where I really tried to drum up some ideas that could take me to places as expansive as the one I just witnessed.

First photo of the NYC Terminal 5 show by Trent Wolbe

Looking for the Perfect Bleep

2009-01-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

"Forget soulless, faceless, relentless, even sexless. What turns old people off about techno is the bleep: the clean, squiggly, unilinear timbre of the synthesizer's high range. This sound defines the difference between electric and electronic, industrial and postindustrial, baseball and Nintendo." Robert Christgau, Another Bleep World, Village Voice, Feb. 16, 1993

What really interests me about Christgau's off-hand, fifteen year-old sort-of-dis* is that it gets to the heart of what I really love about electronic music, techno especially: the sense of alienation that, even after over twenty years of techno music and its associated genres, synthesized textures still connote. Specifically, Christgau seems to be talking about the unnaturally pure high tones that synthesizers can emit through resonant filters, envelope generators and waveform oscillators. But to me the very appeal of the bleep and its cousin sounds altogether are as devices that are so obviously unreal that it becomes fantastic. It's the Brecht-ian element about electronic music that I like, this alien quality of being enveloped in completely and self-consciously artificial world that, acoustically, is unlikely. In the otherworldly quality of the bleep I find that "other thing" that almost touches on an external reality, the kind that others have sought before in color, cinema, non-Euclidean math and certianly in sound.

When thinking about the negative qualities that Christgau identifies in the bleep, some of the most amazing and formative musical experiences of my life come to mind:

My adolescent discovery of techno:

Finding the Improvised Music from Japan related improvisers:

Ryoji Ikeda's binary straight to the brain pulse:

Even KMEL's insistence on putting the Planet Rock beat over everything during "live" mixing sessions and driving around San Francisco as a teen comes to mind:

I especially like Christgau's formation here because it touches on the psycho-acoustically obstructive sounds that techno plays with at times, which is a major part of the project I'm working on now.

*In all fairness, it should be said he takes a suprisingly positive view on the then-emergent techno and rave cultures in the larger article, which is mainly about Utah Saints.